Preview: Rock en Seine
This year’s poster, designed by Sophia Babari.
Rock en Seine, one of France’s staple festivals, is coming back in August for its 2026 edition with a lineup full of promises.
For the past two decades, the festival has been drawing in thousands of people to Domaine de Saint-Cloud for five days of pop-rock shows, with some of the biggest international artists. The headliners for this year’s edition are Tyler the Creator, Deftones, as well as rock legends The Cure and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. With such iconic names, the 3-day and 4-day passes sold out last November, making it an unforgettable festival already.
Alongside them, the lineup is comprised of other big sensations such as DJO, Lorde, Wolf Alice, Amyl and the Sniffers, Turnstile, and Wet Leg.
Additionally, Rock en Seine prides itself as a committed festival, both for emerging talents and social issues like inclusion, diversity, and ecology.
Club Avant Seine is an initiative created in 2005, scouting emerging artists and offering them a stage and a platform over the course of the festival. There is no doubt this opportunity opens doors for people, and some of France’s big artists, such as Zaho de Sagazan or Feu! Chatterton, were once performers of Club Avant Seine.
Moreover, the festival has created a dedicated space called the ACT Area, where they host games, talks and discussions. This area is proof of their commitment toward diversity, inclusion and community, acting as a safe space to discuss social issues and to connect with people. The festival also offers different types of accessibility measures throughout its grounds, from platforms for people with mobility disabilities to vibrating vests and French Sign Language interpreters, as well as a “social chill out zone.” Rock en Seine is ensuring any and every music fan is welcome.
Finally, Rock en Seine has a space dedicated to young kids, allowing families to enjoy the festival together in a safe, quieter space for children to discover music.
All in all, Rock en Seine promises to be an unmissable and unforgettable festival, perfect to close out this summer. While Sunday tickets are sold out, the previous days are still available for purchase here.
You can find the official playlist here to get ready for the festival.
How Does A Photographer Go On Tour?
For many up-and-coming music photographers, the ultimate dream is to go on tour. It’s an incredibly special job, having the opportunity to be in close quarters with an artist, capturing the show night after night as well as the liminal moments between. Yet the process of becoming a tour photographer can seem opaque from the outside.
The Photo Ladies asked artists and touring photographers to weigh in on the matter, and to tell us about how a photographer ends up on tour. There was one clear consensus among our respondents: personality matters a lot.
Both photographers and artists highlighted the need to be flexible and personable, as well as successfully doing your job with clear communication and fast turnaround. You have to be someone that people are comfortable around, both for the benefit of your photography and the benefit of the overall tour experience. Penelope Martinez, who has toured with MUNA and Marina City, stresses that “Your job as a photographer is one of the most intimate roles in live music and you need to act like it, people need to trust you. Not just the artist, but the crew too.” Treating and seeing the artists as people first came up repeatedly across respondents as an essential. Who do you want to be on the same team as when everything goes wrong?
Creative strategist April Bredael, who has worked as a tour photographer and been responsible for hiring them, emphasises that the first tour you get will be the hardest. It’s a classic employment catch-22, that you need the job to get experience, but you need experience to get the job. As April puts it, “Being on the road is not for everyone, and the only way to find out if it’s for you is to do it. When you’re in the position of needing your tour documented, it’s a risk to hire someone who hasn’t toured, even if their work is great. They can be the best photographer in the world, but might not thrive under touring conditions.”
Heading out on tour is a serious financial strain for many musicians. Gas prices, visa expenses, and other rising prices are not helping. An artist may opt to hire local photographers at each or some of the tour stops, or simply rely on photos from press photographers or newbie photographers shooting for free. The costs of tour also mean that a lot of people you might think of as tour photographers are wearing several other hats. Many photographers are simultaneously videographers, merch managers, tour managers, and/or social media managers. Being willing to adapt and develop additional skills makes someone a more valuable potential addition to the tour.
What about the mechanics of actually getting the gig? Photographers end up on tour through inbound and outbound cold DMs and emails, through friends and connections and referrals, responding to Instagram stories, one-time gigs that turn into tour opportunities, shooting as press and impressing management with their work, applying to a posting on the app NOVA. The most common response regarding how they got on tour was photographers citing personal connections they had made in the industry, whether through bands/artists or management.
Beach Bunny’s Lili Trifilio notes that it’s been her specific request when she’s worked with photographer Athena Merry on tour. Touring musician Hoodie Allen says he mostly finds photographers through seeing their work on Instagram or recommendation from a trusted friend, either another photographer or an artist.
As you build a reputation, people hear about you—” If you are a good hang, word gets around band to band and team to team,” says tour manager and photographer Leigh Ann Rodgers, who has 14 years of experience shooting shows, touring since 2018, and doing it full-time since 2021. When you see the same handful of photographers passed between tours, that might be what’s happening.
It’s also not a matter of meeting and instantly becoming a band’s tour photographer. It can build over time. Photographer Sarah Midkiff, who has worked for labels including Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group, Interscope, RCA Records, and Republic Records, went on her first real tour with a band she’d previously interviewed for a publication. She’d shot them every time they returned to the city and developed a positive reputation with the label. Amy Russell, who tours and manages social media for Bowling For Soup, points out that strengthening relationships allows her to “get a bit more close up and get them more involved with content” when it comes to backstage and promotional photos.
There are many skilled and talented photographers out there, but touring is not a meritocratic contest, and there are myriad considerations that an artist and their team have to take into account when figuring out who’s coming on tour. It’s not an impossible dream, but pragmatism and persistence are mandatory. And, as Australia-based photographer Michelle Grace Hunder observes, “Touring seems to be the goal for so many photographers, but it's seriously not for everyone, for many reasons. I do believe it takes a particular personality type.”
by: Anson Julia Tong
Soundtrack Deep Dive: The Boroughs
The Boroughs is Netflix’s latest sci-fi series that topped the streaming platform’s global charts, amassing over fifteen million views in ten days. The show was birthed by longtime friends Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, creators of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, in partnership with wildly successful Stranger Things originators Matt and Ross Duffer, who serve as executive producers on the project.
Starring Bill Pullman, Geena Davis, Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Clarke Peters, and Denis O’Hare, the series depicts a picturesque New Mexico retirement community who unearth menacing monstrous entities hunting down what retirees need most: time. Trading in teenage misfits for those of retirement age, the show is an excellent choice for those itching for a show akin to Stranger Things with a seamless soundtrack to pair.
Nora Felder, CEO of Picture Music Company, offered up her expertise for the show’s soundtrack, pulling familiar rock ‘n’ roll favorites from the ‘70s and ‘80s, including songs by Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Tina Turner, Bill Withers, Bob Seger, and other new favorites, such as Stranger Things’ alum Djo. She partnered with Legacy Recordings for this project and teamed up with composer John Paesano, composer of Maze Runner and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, who penned the show’s original score, catching the show’s emotional and spooky undertones.
David Bowie’s syncopated “Golden Years” from the album Station to Station plays during the trailer of the show and in the opening sequence as ex-engineer Sam Cooper, played by Alfred Molina, arrives at the utopian New Mexico retirement community, invoking a sense of nostalgia while channelling a new beginning. Bowie isn’t unfamiliar to Felder, as she secured Bowie’s staple “Heroes” for the Stranger Things finale, nourishing her pre-existing relationship with the singer’s estate.
Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” makes a few appearances throughout the season, serving as a tribute to Sam and the memory of his late wife, Lilly, played by Jane Kaczmarek. Felder told Netflix that they ran through “at least 100 ideas” before officially selecting the song.
The multi-Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated music supervisor also curated the music for Stranger Things, where she won the Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Music Supervision for her placement of Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” in episode “Chapter Four: Dear Billy.” The usage massively reignited the 1985 song’s popularity and sent the song soaring to the No. 3 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. She’s also the mastermind behind the soundtracks for Yellowjackets, Californication, Ray Donovan, and more.
All the songs in The Boroughs are below:
Episode 1 - “Welcome to the Boroughs”
David Bowie - “Golden Years”
Santana - “Oye Como Va”
Bruce Springsteen - “Thunder Road”
Bob Seger - “Night Moves”
Jacob Bright - “Easy Life”
Mike Jemison - “Spread Some Love”
Head Cut - “Straight Sound”
Earth, Wind & Fire - “Shining Star”
Netflix Recording / The Killers cover - “All These Things I’ve Done”
Episode 2 - “The Mourning After”
Ultimate Spinach - “Visions of Your Reality”
Sexbeat - “Sex Beat”
Lauryn Hill - “The Ex-Factor”
The Melophonics - “Champagne Nights”
Madeline Bell - “Love Is All”
Etta James - “Stormy Weather”
Episode 3 - “A Pyramid”
Queens of the Stone Age - “You’ve Got a Killer Scene There, Man”
Djo - “Back on You”
Dead Man’s Bones - “Lose Your Soul”
Clarke Peters singing Tina Turner - “I Can’t Stand the Rain”
Episode 4 - “Forbidden Fruit”
Tina Turner - “I Can’t Stand the Rain”
David Lawrence, Velma Valentina - “Alone”
Bill Withers - “Lovely Day”
Alan Hawkshaw - “Bluebird”
Illustration - “Upon The Earth”
Siouxsie & the Banshees - “The Passenger”
Cheryl Thompson - “Black Night”
Episode 5 - “Another Beautiful Day”
The Glasser Brothers - “Words Come Easy”
Johnny Cash - “Belshazar”
Morrie Morrison - “Goodbye Little Girl Goodbye”
Episode 6 - “The Grey Rebellion”
Engelbert Humperdinck - “Up Up and Away”
The Hues Corporation - “Rock The Boat”
The O’Jays - “Love Train”
Jim Wolfe - “Comin’ Back To You”
The Undisputed Truth - “Smiling Faces Sometimes”
Alfred Molina / Bruce Springsteen cover - “Thunder Road”
Episode 7 - “Time To Go”
Heart - “Barracuda”
Fred Astaire - “Cheek to Cheek”
Cast / Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong - “Cheek to Cheek”
Cast / Bruce Springsteen - “Thunder Road” (Karaoke)
Cast / Andy Williams - “Promise Me, Love”
Episode 8 - “Tripe Audible”
The Lovin’ Spoonful - “Do You Believe in Magic”
Santana - “Oye Como Va”
The Spiral Staircase - “More Than Yesterday”
Bruce Springsteen - “Thunder Road”
Bruce Springsteen - “Born To Run”
Interview: Azam Ali
Azam Ali encapsulates many gifts as an artist. Born in Iran, schooled in India and having lived in Canada, the LA-based singer, songwriter, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist has been named one of the most versatile and gifted singers and composers on the international stage today. Spending her formative years in India allowed Azam to absorb the country’s rich musical and cultural influences, as well as to focus on her school’s emphasis on the arts and spirituality. She moved to the United States as a teenager with her mother in 1985 and immediately began to study the Santour (Persian Hammered Dulcimer). She later realized that through singing she could fully express herself and it set her on the musical journey that has carried her to where she is now. The start of her music career began in 1996 when she founded the world music duo Vas. After releasing 4 albums, the duo parted ways in 2004. She met her husband Loga Ramin Torkian, a fellow Iranian who had immigrated to the United States following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, in 2005 and together they founded the group Niyaz. By incorporating a blend of acoustic and electronic music into their sound, Niyaz’s lyrics combine Arabian and Persian folk sounds with mystical Sufi poetry that conveys the universal struggles of the human soul and experience. She views her life’s work as creating something that transcends religion and culture and to show people that we are all the same. Niyaz has performed in multiple countries around the world and their music has been featured in film and television scores. Azam has collaborated in the studio and on stage with artists such as Serj Tankian of System of A Down, Peter Murphy of Bauhaus, The Crystal Method and Trey Gunn of King Crimson. She has worked with renowned composers such as Christopher Young, Harry Greyson-Williams, Michael Danna and Graeme Revell and her voice can he heard on film and television scores such as ‘Thor-The Dark World’, ‘Matrix-Revolutions’, ‘300’ and ‘The Fight Club’. She most recently worked with David Buckley on an episode of Season 2 of Sandman.
In 2002, Ali began a solo career outside of Niyaz and released her first solo album, Portals of Grace. She went on to produce 4 more solo albums, 2006’s Elysium for the Brave, which reached #10 that year on Billboard’s World Albums Chart, 2011’s Night to the Edge of Day, a collection of lullabies inspired by her son, 2013’s Lamentation of Swans-A Journey Towards Silence, a joint effort with her husband, and 2019’s Phantoms. Over the course of the past decade, Ali has been learning production side of music and carving out her place in the male dominated field of electronic music production. For her fifth solo album, Phantoms, she was responsible for every facet of the album—she composed every song, programmed all the instrumentation, sang every note, and produced the entire album, a rarity in the male-dominated realm of electronic music. “This album is the castle of my dreams. It has transformed me, and opened me up to a new world of self-expression,” she says. On November 14th of this year, Azam released her latest solo album Synesthesia through her new label COP International. Like Phantoms in 2019, it was was written, performed, and produced by Azam and is her second all-English album. The album is named after the sensory phenomenon of synesthesia in which a person can taste colors, feel sounds, or associate certain words or music with specific colors. She released two singles, along with accompanying videos directed by artist Tas Limur, ahead of the albums release- “Synesthesia” and “To Pieces”. She describes “To Pieces” as “a song of destruction, of fire consuming everything in its path, yet within that annihilation lies the threshold of renewal, and the promise of something new”. With regards to “Synesthesia, she says, “My music is an invitation to step beyond the confines of time, place, and the fragile vessel of flesh, into a universe without borders. I want the listener to feel carried into the vastness of the ethereal, where freedom breathes and every note reveals our part in a greater design. In this realm, we are no longer solitary beings, but shining stars drawn together into galaxies, each one a reminder that we are participants in a cosmic symphony far larger than ourselves.”
Having completed and released this latest solo album, Azam has turned her focus to the new multi-media stage production she is helping to create with her band Niyaz for their new upcoming album. You can follow Azam Ali and stay up-to-date on all music, tours, and band announcements, as well as listen to and purchase Synesthesia, via the links below:
WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | SPOTIFY | APPLE MUSIC | YOUTUBE | SOUNDCLOUD
Your new solo album Synesthesia will be released on November 14th. I read that after Phantoms was released in 2019, and then the ensuing pandemic, you fell into a depression and didn't have plans to release another album. How did Synesthesia come about and what inspired you to decide to make another album?
Well, for me, making albums is never really a conscious decision. It is something that evolved so organically. After Phantoms...I had invested so much financially in that album and it really, in terms of what came back, it showed me that in today's world, it's virtually impossible as an artist to earn a living making records. They've basically become very expensive business cards. It just financially didn't make sense. And I'm a mother and have a son who is about to go to university. So that was kind-of depressing for me, realizing that it doesn't financially make sense anymore to make records. And then also realizing that I'm the kind of artist that I am. I felt like I didn't really belong in today's world of being an Instagram artist, a social media artist. I'm not really that kind of an artist. So, unless you are, it's hard to earn a living. That compounded with the pandemic and all of that, it really threw me into a depression. But, music is my sanctuary and I am always writing. I do it for myself. It's a form of therapy, so I just started writing songs. My friend Christian, who owns COP International, is a good friend and lives in the Bay Area. He used to come to LA for work and it became a bit of a ritual where, before he was driving up to Oakland where he lived, he'd just stop by my house in LA and have coffee with me. We would just end up talking for a couple of hours about politics, life, and everything and then on one of the visits he asked me, "Why aren't you making another record?". I said, "I've written a bunch of songs that's really a whole album in itself and kind-of a follow up to Phantoms but I don't think I'll be releasing it. I don't feel like I belong in this world anymore, my music." So, he said "Can I hear it?". I said sure, so we went upstairs and I played him what I had done and he said, "You know what? If you finish this album, I'll fund it and put it out there”. That was a hard offer not to take, so I said ok, because suddenly I had someone supporting me. Christian played a big part in me finishing the album and putting it out. Otherwise, I'm not really sure I would have. And through the course of it, when I was recording and mixing, I would send him texts late at night just crying and thanking him for pushing me to do it. Once the album really started coming together, I felt like what I had on my hands didn't just belong to me. It belonged to others, as well.
It's really such a beautiful album!
Thank you so much. Art is not meant just for the artist. We start to create it for ourselves, but at the end we ultimately create it for others.
How did you decide which songs to release as singles ahead of the album's release?
I kind-of took a poll among friends and Rey Roldan, my publicist- I trust his taste so much. He has impeccable taste, so he played a big part in helping me to choose the songs. As an artist, it's hard sometimes because you have tunnel vision and become attached to songs and it can be hard to choose. I kind-of knew that "Synsesthesia" and "To Pieces" were two magic tracks on there. But, having others reaffirm that was really the reason why those became the two main singles.
Can you talk a bit about the cover art for the album and working with artist Tas Limur on not only the cover art but the videos for "Synesthesia" and "To Pieces"? What was that experience like?
Tas worked with me on Phantoms, as well, and it was an amazing experience. I met Tas through a mutual friend who is an artist, a painter, and I needed to desperately make a video for the title track "Phantoms" on the last record. It was a very last-minute thing and I just reached out to my artist friends and asked if they knew anyone. My friend said, "Yes. This is the guy. His aesthetic and yours are identical, so you need to reach out to him." I sort-of met Tas on a blind date. I hired him and the first time I met him was on set. So that was the music video for "Phantoms", which did really, really well. It was such an easy working experience. So, when I did this album, I reached out to him and said, "Look. I want the entire aesthetic of this album to be your creation." I gave him creative freedom and he asked me what my initial visions were and I just had it constantly in my head, this painting of Ophelia. I thought it would be so amazing that instead of her dying in this painting, what if she lives. I just had this idea for the cover. I wanted everything to be very dreamy and otherworldly, going along with the theme of "Synesthesia". He captured it so perfectly. We worked so hard on that music video and we built the set. It was like old school art creation. We built it with 4 by 4's and a couple of my friends showed up and we built a 10 by 10, like a 6-inch deep pool and flooded it with warm water and hundreds of flowers and leaves. It was the hardest music video I have ever done. Going into that tank was Tas's idea and I'll tell you, I did it and am never doing it again (laughs)! It was so difficult! They make it look so easy, these artists who do these deep water videos. It's such a hard thing to do. The maximum I could float down...I could be down there for 3 seconds, so we had to do a hundred takes of me going down there for 3 seconds. But he did such a phenomenal job. I feel like, aesthetically, the album looks as it sounds and feels. That's what synesthesia is, a coming together of all of the senses.
Could you talk a bit about your own experience with synesthesia?
Mine is actually very mild. I do believe, actually, that everyone has it to a certain degree. I notice it most when people describe and talk about certain songs that mean something to them. It happens to me all of the time. They'll say, "Oh. I listened to this song of yours and I just see this forest." And that's just one example, and that fascinates me, because i feel that something sonic is triggering something visual. So, I think that everybody does have it, to a certain degree, but of course it's an actual medical condition. Some have it very extreme. I have a friend whose son, for example, sees certain numbers, and they give him very intense colors. Certain numbers, when he sees the numbers, it triggers certain colors for him. Mine has to do mostly with velvet. I have a lot of velvet in my closet. Since I was a teenager, I've become obsessed with silk velvet, and I can actually taste it when I touch it and feel it. It crosses into taste. I also have it with scents, where certain scents trigger very visceral memories. I have it more in that sense. Also, sonically, when I create music...music for me isn't just an auditory experience. It's a very spacial experience. I have it more in that sense.
You have a couple of covers on your album- Tim Buckley's "Song To The Siren" and Natalie Merchant's "This House Is On Fire". What is the significance of those particular tracks for you and what led to your decision to include them on the album?
I usually like to do covers, but I'm very careful about which ones I choose. For me, doing a cover does not come from a place of thinking I can perform the song better than the original artist. It really comes from a place of reverence and paying homage to an artist and a song that had a major impact on my own artistic journey. Tim Buckley's "Song To The Siren" has been covered so many times, so I'm not reinventing the wheel by performing it again. I was particularly influenced by Liz Frasier's version of it for This Mortal Coil. I probably, in my late teens, listened to that song maybe dozens of times on repeat. For this album, I really wanted to include a cover of that as a tribute to both Liz Frasier and Tim Buckley. As far as Natalie Merchant's song, that song of hers, when I first heard it, sonically and aesthetically it has gorgeous, gorgeous songwriting and production. She also incorporates Middle Eastern melodies so effortlessly. It's stunning, her version of it. Lyrically, I felt that what she penned, the lyrics she penned, are timeless. It was such a political statement at the time, a social and political statement. Those kinds of honest statements and that kind of truth-telling from artists, for me, are so timeless. I felt that this song of hers, given our current political and social climate, not just in America but globally, is again relevant today. I felt like deserved a new rendition out there to remind people of what I believe to be a very important song.
You have described "To Pieces" as a meditation on betrayal and the wounds we inflict on each other as human beings, as well as nature’s own betrayal and how, within that devastation, lies a threshold where annihilation yields to the promise of something new. Can you talk a bit about that perspective and the ways you feel that humanity is evolving towards something new and is trying to claw our way out of the darkness?
In the last two years, I think we..."To Pieces" was one of the songs I wrote later in the album. The last two years, for me personally, were quite devastating, with the genocide in Gaza and everything happening politically in America. The division. We kind-of, I feel, saw the worst and are still seeing the worst of humanity and the kinds of horrors and cruelty we are capable of inflicting on one another. And not only that, but also ecocide and how are destroying the planet. When I wrote that song, that's really why the video has so much red. I kept seeing red and destruction and fire, and I felt that's kind of the phase we are in. But if we examine nature, when there are wildfires, for example, just within the design of the wildfires, built into it is the design for the renewal and regrowth. That song really became about the destruction all around us, in terms of humanity and also nature, but that within this destruction is also the design for something new. I feel, in terms of politics, seeing what's happening in New York with the election of Zohran Mamdani, and how we brought people of all different religions and ethnicities and identities together, I feel like that gives me tremendous hope. I feel that's a perfect example of how, within the destruction, something new is emerging that is giving us something I think many of us have not had for two years. And that's hope.
It makes you think that maybe things will be ok!
Yes! Absolutely. It's beautiful to see all of the people who are coming together. Mamdani could not have won that election without Jewish supporters. And the fact that everybody came out means that we all recognize that the system that exists, the current system, is not sustainable. Not in terms of humanity or nature. We need to build a new system, and I think just seeing people coming together in NYC has given the entire country, and even beyond that hope. I see messages from all over the world, of people seeing what happened in NY and saying it gives them hope.
You have been very vocal on your platform about everything happening in the world, whether about Gaza, Iran, Afghanistan and beyond, and all of the suffering happening. As someone whose own life has been shaped by war and displacement, and politics, what do you see as your role as an artist in using your music and platform to voice your views and experiences, despite the pushback you have received?
When people tell me, and believe me I hear it a lot, to just shut up and sing and that they don't want to hear about my political and social views and to just "give us your music", I remind them that actually my music is an autobiography of my life. I would not make the kind of music that I am making if it wasn't for the life I have lived. War, displacement, dehumanization, those are all a part of my own lived experiences. And asking me to not talk about that is basically asking me not to express myself as an artist and the full spectrum of who I am. For me, using my platform as an artist to talk about what is happening in the world is part of the exact same truth-telling as the kind of music I write, in which I am being completely, 100% honest in terms of my emotions and the output of what I am expressing. It's the same truth-telling, and I cannot separate the two. And in terms of, especially with the genocide in Gaza, I've felt that how could I possibly just post about mundane things, like what I'm eating or just anything, when there are literally children being killed every single day. And particularly the plight of children is something that is extremely sensitive for me, because I myself was an orphan. I grew up in a boarding school since I was 4, in India. I know what it's like to suffer as a child and to be alone and afraid. So, the plight of children is particularly close to my heart, and if I would not have used my platform, despite all of the push back, I feel that I would have failed as a human being and as an artist.
Do you think that more artists are starting to find their voice, despite the pressure to remain silent, on issues like that?
You know, it's such a personal matter. I do my best not to judge artists when they don't speak out. I'll be honest though-it's hard not to, especially when it's an artist I admire and feel like they are outspoken about some issues but then suddenly become very selective about certain issues. I feel there is a kind-of intersectionality in liberational movements. You can't stand up for LGBTQ rights but then not stand up for other people being oppressed. I feel like we have to apply our morality and our humanity equally across all liberation movements. They are all interconnected. It's hard for me not to be disappointed...maybe that's a better word...in artists I admire, who I feel have a larger platform than I do. I do feel that, perhaps in the last two years, I'm seeing more and more artists speaking out. Perhaps it's because you see others do it and you do find courage in that. I do feel that you find courage. And even if there is a loss, like for me there was a huge loss in the beginning, maybe the first 6-7 months of the genocide, and then suddenly everything just shifted. I found my own people. I found people who cared about what I had to say in terms of that. I remind people, when they say, "Do you feel like it was worth the cost?", that even if you don't feel the cost of it in terms of losing work or money or relationships, there is a cost. It's a cost of the conscience and of the kind of future that we are imagining that we want to build. There is an absolute cost, even if you don't feel it immediately. You have a responsibility as an artist, especially in today's world where media is so biased. We watched an entire genocide live-streamed on social media. This is the future. This is it, you know?
It's pretty staggering for sure.
I know. And the news isn't going to give us the real information. This is how it is from now on, you know?
Blessings to the brave journalists in Gaza, because otherwise we wouldn't really know what's going on.
Exactly. Exactly.
So much of your music is infused with poetry and folktales/folklore, instrumentation, prayers, lullabies, and whatnot from many different cultures...mainly Middle Eastern cultures. Can you talk a bit about using those deep cultural references in your music and your ability to bridge the spiritual, cultural, and musical connections and struggles that you have mentioned feeling intertwined with yourself?
My music, all of it, from the world music I create to my own solo stuff with English, which is a more singer-songwriter approach, is all storytelling. It's a storytelling and an autobiography of my life. I feel, as artists, that we are in a unique position to share with people so many stories. I love the fact that the majority of my audiences are not from any of the cultures whose music I present, but they are all interested and they come. There is something very universal in the overall message, especially when it comes to folk music. I'm particularly interested in folk music of the world, because I feel like folk music is the music of the people. Even in America. When you share that, there is something, even if people don't understand the language. It resonates on a very human level. I'm interested in that and juxtapositioning it against something very modern. Which is kind-of the story of my life, coming from an ancient culture and then finding myself in America and a modern world. And then how do I reconcile these two realities?
Over the years you have done a lot of music for film, television, and video games and were recently a featured vocalist on season 2 of Sandman, having called the experience one of your favorite cues you've ever worked on. What can you tell me about that experience and how it came about, as well as working with David Buckley on the score?
A lot of my work for film and tv, it's not really my vision, and that's why I really like it. It's interesting for me to work with composers and try to capture their vision, because in that process, I feel like I'm going on to become a better artist. My own work is just about expressing myself and my own aesthetic, and sometimes I don't really get what they want, or maybe I'm not enjoying what I'm doing. But every single time I do it, I feel like I come out of it on the other side a better artist. David Buckley is an incredible composer. When he came to me, and once in a while this happens to me, he reached out and said that he had this cue that was, like, three minutes and no dialogue. He said, "I really don't know what to do here. I created this sort of bed of music, but I can't really write the vocal style that you do, and I don't know what to do. So, why don't you take this, and you'll have 100% creative freedom to just sing whatever you want? Just make it multi-layered." He gave me this freedom. He had already created an incredible bed of music, so I wasn't starting from scratch. I had something that was very inspiring already to begin with. And then, I just poured my soul into it, and he loved it, and the producers loved it. It was just one of those rare incidents that happen where you get complete creative freedom, and it becomes a true collaboration. It really was a true collaboration with David.
Can you talk a bit about the collaborative album you are doing with the artist Buckethead, Flowers For The Bees, and how that came about?
Yes. I've known Buckethead for so many years. We met in the early 2000s because we were both on different labels, and Virgin Records bought the labels that we were on. And then they created a small tour for a select group of artists whom they had acquired through their merger. Buckethead was one of them, as well as my last band, Vas. We met on that tour and had four dates in Europe. We travelled together over the course of, I think, ten days or something and immediately bonded. He's such a gentle soul and such a smart, deep-thinking human being, and we just completely bonded. I had no idea who he was before that. We just became friends and then he did a solo album that our mutual friend Serj Tankian produced. Buckethead asked me to sing on that album, so I sang, and then we kind of went our separate ways. Years passed, and then he reached out to me, and he asked if I wanted to do an album together, and I said Sure. It's kind of been evolving, and we have around four songs that are done. It's very slow because I'm very busy and he's very busy. The only way I can describe it is that it's so ethereal, this album. It's mostly just all guitar and voice. I don't think we're really going to have any other instruments. It's very bare bones, with ethereal guitar and voice. In fact, in December, he's performing at The Wiltern in Los Angeles, and he asked me to join him on stage to perform two of the songs, so I am very excited about that. Hopefully, we will finish the album this year and next year we'll get something out there for everyone to enjoy.
You did a run of European shows with Niyaz over the summer. How were the shows?
Those were really great shows. What was interesting is, you know, now we're mostly performing our multi-media project, so when we went to Europe, we went back to sort of our roots of beginning in clubs. It was not the multimedia shows. It was very interesting, after all these years, going back to performing in clubs. It was so much fun, just dancing with people and meeting with people in that very intimate setting, rather than a proper performing arts centre.
What can you tell me about your life outside of music? Are you still making jewellery and doing your fine art prints? And what’s next for you?
Yes. But you know, honestly, my fine art prints...someone just asked me about that the other day. "Why aren't you making any more?". And I thought, what I really loved about that composite work was that it was really hard and would take around ten hours to create an image, taking different photographs and putting them together to create something surreal. Now, with AI art, everything looks like that and it's so hard to...I feel like no matter what I create, it's just going to look as if I created it with AI. So, I've become a little bit jaded, honestly, in terms of visual art. With my jewellery, I'm still making it, but not as much because we are building a brand new multi-media stage production for the new (Niyaz) album. We're actually almost done with the new Niyaz album. We have one more song to record and we're working on a massive stage production, which we are launching in March. All of my energy is right now going into that. It's one of the reasons, also, that I haven't scheduled any shows for Synesthesia, because I really don't have time to tour the album. All of my focus is on this new production. I can't wait to bring that show to the stage, because what we are creating is incredible!
I can't wait to catch a show!
Interview: Felly
Felly (Christian Robert Felner), an indie artist, singer, songwriter, and record producer grew up in Connecticut and began writing music in high school. Although he grew up in a non-musical household, he was deeply impacted by the death of his father at the age of 7 and discovered music as a way to feed him. He was turned onto a variety of music by his siblings growing up, from Bob Dylan, to Dave Matthews Band, to Counting Crows, to hip hop artists, and forged his own musical path as a result. Felly’s journey as a musician evolved organically, with him starting out as a solo artist, making beats, sampling vinyl records, and arranging and producing his music. He later delved into songwriting, playing guitar, and writing, producing, and collaborating with other artists. The progression of his musical journey has allowed him to evolve as an artist, with both the sound of his music and his embracing a more collaborative and full-band approach to recording and performing. Having made music for 10+ years, he has released several studio albums, mixed tapes, EPs, and singles.
He released his latest studio album, Ambroxyde, in June of this year, with a departure from the rap/hip hop sounds of previous releases to more of an indie-rock sound. The album, produced alongside Grammy-nominated and Mercury Prize-winning producer Gianluca Buccellati (Lana Del Rey, Arlo Parks, The Marias), was recorded in several locations around the world, from Iceland to Greece to Texas, with the different settings helping to shape the sound of the album. On September 23rd, Felly embarked with his band on a 29-date US tour that will see him promote the new album while still playing some older fan favorites! And having caught the first stop on his tour in Louisville, I can honestly say everyone is in for a treat! It was a party on stage and in the crowd! You can follow Felly via the link below to keep up-to-date on all upcoming music, news, and tour dates.
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You grew up in Connecticut and started releasing music in high school. What can you tell me about your childhood and what led you to want to make music? Did you grow up in a musical family?
Connecticut was definitely not a place that felt artistic in many ways. The goal was always sort of to get out. I saw early that a future there in music just wouldn’t give back to me too much. I think I knew one other kid who made music and no one in my family had a musical bone in their body. I think I was always just following the music and knew it wasn’t there, but had to obviously grow up first. I think my drive to make music came from my dad dying when I was 7 years old and just having a bunch of time alone - think I had to find something that fed me. And it was vinyl records at first. Those felt like a time machine and friends that I could rely on. I was the youngest of three at the time and my brother and sister had sort of…normalish lives. Though they did put me on to a ton of really good music like Bob Dylan, Counting Crows, Dave Matthews Band… hip hop stuff came later when my mom remarried and I gained two step brothers who loved Lil Wayne. There’s something in psychology about the youngest assessing what his elders do, and then carving their own route. So I think I was determined to find my own thing and found it early in music. It felt untapped and unique to me.
Could you talk a bit about your evolution as an artist, from your early days to now, and growing confidence in your abilities? What are some of the greatest lessons you learned, as well as mistakes you made and learned from?
Early on I was just working with what I had. A beat machine, some vinyl records to sample, and a usb microphone. I would make beats and knew how to arrange things and produce, but it always felt incomplete without words. Then came writing and lyrics. I think as time progressed and I leaned in more to playing guitar, writing songs with other musicians, producing, collaborating - I started to understand that music didn’t just have to feel like bed room beats. And the sounds that I would have to get from samples…I could learn to play and create my own way. I think I learned that limitations could be your best friend.
You released albums on major labels before becoming independent. What can you tell me about that transition and your experience of being both on a label and an independent artist?
I’ve been on and off labels for about 8 years. I think it just works like this: whatever makes sense for that time in your life, and whoever aligns (whether a major label or a distribution company or completely independent), you just follow that. Working with anyone has its upsides and its downsides. With major labels you could be creating music, maybe even subconsciously, for a certain reason. That loan you get can feel like - well, I gotta make something that makes that back for them. When you’re doing it independently and funding it yourself, you don’t really have anyone to appease - which is a nice feeling. I think a blend of both is great. It’s certainly hard to do everything yourself.
You now reside in LA. What prompted you to move from the east coast to the west coast? I’ve had other artists talk about the difference between the two parts of the country, that there is a lighter/sunnier and more upbeat vibe on the west coast. Have you found this to be true for you and has it changed your process for songwriting and making music?
I went to LA in 2014 when I somehow got into USC’s music school. Luckily they were in their first year of having a music industry program, so even though I didn’t know how to read music or play an instrument, I had a following within the music world and they welcomed me in. This opened me up to all the other kids who were maybe in the jazz school or pop studies - and I just sort of put together a team and helped to start a record label out of a dorm room where we would bring everyone together. Everyone was hungry for some sort of mission - and I think I was able to put together a vision for that.
You released your latest album Ambroxyde in June of this year, with it being a more personal and earnest album. Could you talk a bit about the making of the album, which took place all over the world, from Iceland to Greece to Texas? How did each location influence the songs and the making of the album as a whole?
We went all over the world pretty much just to get out of our comfort zone of making music in Los Angeles and being in home studios. I met a producer early on named Gianluca and he had a similar mindset that it might be time to branch out and see who we are and what we would come up with in different settings. So we went to Iceland, then came back to la to figure out some things, then went to this studio in Greece, and then finished it off with the band in El Paso, Texas at this studio called Sonic Ranch. I think each place contributed to the sound in some way and in on some tracks you have recordings from each place. For example, we’d like the drums and guitars from Greece and pair them with the vocals from Texas. It was a really cool sort of collage way of going about things.
This album has more of an indie and alternative sound, influenced by much of the music that you listened to growing up. You have talked about how previously it has been just you on your computer rapping beats, but now, having spent the time to become a better musician, you have been able to make the album you always wanted to make. Could you talk about that journey for you and the personal significance of this album?
Definitely- I think the process alone for this one helped me to see I could keep growing. We all want that feeling of progression and evolution in some way. It’s inherent in humans and natural for us. I think if you do the same thing too long you can stop being impressed by yourself. I learned a lot about leaning into what may feel uncomfortable - and that can sometimes achieve sounds you never thought you could make.
This album has been described as “not Felly 2.0, but Felly as he’s always been, removed from all expectations”. Did you feel pressure earlier in your career to be the artist everyone expected you to be or do you feel like this evolution in sound was a more natural and organic process for you?
I never felt like I was making things from a place of “I’m expected to make this”. I think with this record I more so had to honor the fact that I’m not 19 years old anymore and if I were to try to sound like that it wouldn’t come off authentic. So I think in some way I just allowed myself to sit deeper into who I am and be ok with it if it wasn’t what people have pinned me to be. I think this just comes from releasing records for 10 years and being ok with changing things up to align with where you are at the current moment.
You have said how you are focused on longevity and have seen the game change so many times and move around. What can you tell me about your perspective on the music industry and how it’s changed throughout your career? Do you feel like you have an easier time as an artist in being independent-that it allows you more freedom to adapt and be the kind of artist you want to be?
The music “industry” is so different now. So much more emphasis on visuals and roll out. How people consume is different today. I used to just drop on Soundcloud and things would take. Now there’s just so many more cars on the road that to make your mark you might have to be a bit more intentional. Just to lead people to the music you know. I’m not sure if in today’s age it really matters if you’re independent or not. Either way it’s up to the artist to find a way to cut through. Some of my favorite artists who I think are so talented still can’t find a way to get through the noise.
Your tour starts on September 23rd in Louisville, KY! Have you performed in Louisville before and what are you most looking forward to with this tour and performing the new album live?
I don’t think I’ve ever performed in Louisville. I think we did Lawrence many years ago. All I know about Louisville is Jack Harlow - mostly from doing a song with him a few years back. And Bryson Tiller. I’m excited to see what the people there are like. The south always has a genuine kind of love for music.
You have talked about the future of Felly as you see it, with more of a collaborative, full band approach, rather than being a solo artist. Can you talk about the future of Felly in that regard?
I definitely want to keep including my friends and the band. But I also don’t want to sleep on my own self production. I think it’s gonna be a blend of the two. I learned a lot from this past record and feel capable of more now. it’ll be interesting to see what I go with next.
Aside from your upcoming tour, what’s next for you?
I want to build an off grid studio somewhere where artists and friends can come create. Been thinking about it for a while and dreaming up what that would look like. The studio in Iceland really moved me. Something like that but in the US.
Interview: Cymarshall Law
Love and self-empowerment. That is the philosophy and religion of New Jersey rap and hip hop artist Cymar Simmons, who goes by the moniker Cymarshall Law. Born in England to Jamaican parents, his home was filled with love, family, and soulful reggae music, as his father was a Jamaican MC. When he was 9, he moved with his parents and brother to the US and settled in New Jersey. His brother’s love for rap and hip-hop music influenced his love for the genre, and he began penning his rhymes. Having grown up listening to reggae music with conscious lyrics and appreciating groups such as Wu-Tang Clan, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest, to name a few, whose music has a message, he strives to do the same with his music. In 2000/2001, he and his brother started performing together as Everliven Sound and started the label Freedom Entertainment. He has also made music outside of the group, having released many albums and projects over the past 20+ years, many of which have seen him collaborate with a number of artists, and has embarked on a number of international tours. Aside from music, Simmons is also an author, recently releasing his book 52 Laws of Freedom, a book that aims to help people reconnect with their most authentic selves and achieve emotional resilience and mental clarity.
On June 13th, he released his latest album, The Peaceful Warrior 2: Raw Self-Expression. The album was produced with UK producer Slimline Mutha, with whom Simmons has been working for 20 years, and is his 2nd album with the producer. The album explores themes of duality, creativity, and authenticity and one that Simmons feels may be his best album yet. Simmons has a busy year ahead, as he plans to release a series of children’s books that will be a children’s version of 52 Laws of Freedom and will be releasing another album at the end of the year. He will be performing at Rhyme Fest LA in August, joining a line-up that includes artists such as The Alchemist, Dilated Peoples, DJ Quik, and he says will be one of his biggest shows to date. He will also be continuing his podcast, The Cymarshall Law Show, an insightful podcast that covers a variety of positive topics emphasising positivity, love, independence, motivation, knowledge, and wisdom from various guests. Make sure to keep up with Cymarshall Law and all upcoming events and music via the following links.
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You were born in England and lived there until you were 9 years old. What can you tell me about your childhood there and then moving here and adjusting to life in the United States?
In England, I'm not sure if you knew, but they graduate high school there at 16. So even though I was 9 years old, I only had 7 more years of school to go. As soon as I moved to America, that changed immediately. As a matter of fact, my brother was 15 when we moved and thought he was about to get out of high school. When we came to America he had to go right back to school. In England, I feel like a lot of people come to each other's houses, as far as friends. I don't feel like that is something that happens over here as much. So, when I was living in England, it felt a lot more like a community thing. When I came to America, I guess because my family is spread out so much, I didn't really grow up with a lot of cousins or family around me, whereas in England I had a lot of family around me. In addition, I always like to tell people, especially my American friends, because we usually have different taste in music, that there are a lot of Jamaicans in England. My parents were both born in Kingston, Jamaica, and because of that, I grew up in England listening to a lot of soulful reggae music. My friends in America really grew up listening to jazz from their parents, so we grew up different like that. I feel like hip hop was the great connector, because when hip hop was really coming of age, that's really when I was, like, born. And then I moved about 10 years after that and then my friends that I ended up relating to in America were going through the same transition. They were going from jazz to hip hop and I was going from reggae to hip hop, so hip hop is really where we met in the middle. But, yeah, I love England and I go back as much as possible. It's just different from America in a lot of ways, but I appreciate both places.
What can you tell me about the ways in which your older brother's love for rap music influenced you and led you to start penning your own rhymes and making rap and hip hop music yourself?
Yeah. So, our father was a Jamaican reggae mc before both of us. I used to always see my brother and father have these conversations about music when I was too young to really know the ins and outs. I always looked up to my brother in a way that he had respect for my dad like that. Even more than music, I tried to copy my brother for everything. He played right wing in soccer, so I had to play right wing in soccer. He wanted to be a dancer, so I wanted to be a dancer. So, in that way I always looked up to my brother and always wanted to be like him. And then luckily, it was more than me just wanting to be like him. I actually was like him, because we came from the same parents and were taught a lot of the same things. So, when we were listening to a lot of reggae coming up in our house, there were a lot of conscious lyrics. When I went to go start writing rhymes, the first thing he told me was...because my brother taught me how to rhyme. So, the first thing he told me was "always bring yourself to the table and make sure you're not like anyone else". He said the way I could do that is just by representing our family, because there are no two families who are exactly alike. If I was able to talk about our family in a way that, as cool as we think our family is, if I was able to express that to the world, then people would gravitate towards that. And that's probably the main thing he taught me, just to be myself and to represent our family. I feel like a lot of people in hip hop, or just in any genre in the world or anything, tend to copy each other when they see something is working. But that thing that is actually working is the individual being themselves and they got so good at it that other people started wanting to copy it. That's the biggest thing I got from my brother, just understanding that everyone has a piece of greatness within them and my job is to express my family's greatness and our identity.
What can you tell me about the group Everliven that you started with your brother around 2000/2001, as well as Freedom Entertainment, the label you formed?
I'll start with the label, because that came before the group. The label is Freedom Entertainment, and we are called Freedom because my father used to own a reggae sound system in England...Jamaican Reggae Sound System, where they would go to different parts of England and sound clash versus other reggae sound systems. That sound was called freedom sound, so when we started to do our own label, we decided we wanted to bridge the gap between my father's sound clash of freedom sound and what we're doing. So, we called it Freedom Entertainment to pay homage to what our father did. And then to move on to Everliven, as in something that will never die. And the reason it's spelled like that is because in hip hop we tend to, like, change the letters or spelling of things just to make it our own, just to make it hip hop. It's pronounced Everliving, but is spelled Everliven, and Everliven comes from the fact that we are very soulful and spiritual people. We believe that the soul is something that never had a beginning and never had an ending. It's energy and energy can't die. Everliving. It's always here and is never going to die, just like people's souls and spirits. So, what's in the sound of our music, we feel like our music will live forever and never die.
How would you describe the early days of your rap/hip hop career and how do you feel you have evolved as an artist since then?
That's a fun question. When I first started rapping, I couldn't control my voice very well and I have more treble, like a higher pitched voice. So, when I used to rap, all you could hear were the highs, and when I would speak on the mic, they'd say it would sound like I was screaming. That was because I didn't also know how to hold a microphone and got taught by my father how to hold a microphone. And a lot of times when you go to shows nowadays, there are a lot of artists you may not be able to hear, and that's because their fathers may not have taught them how to hold a microphone. You are supposed to hold a microphone from the bottom, so your hand is not cuffing the microphone where you are actually supposed to be talking into it. In the beginning of my career, I didn't know anything like that. I was holding my hand over the microphone and screaming into the microphone, so everything was high pitched. And then additionally, I didn't know to count bars. I didn't know song formats. So, typically a song format would go, like, a 4 or 8 bar intro, then a 16 bar verse, then an 8 bar chorus, then another 16 bar verse, then another 8 bar chorus, and another 16 bar verse, then end the song with an 8 bar chorus or, like, a 2 bar bridge. I didn't know anything like that. So, when I was making my songs initially...like, I remember sending a demo to a record label named Fat Beats back in the day, like in the very beginning of my career. Coincidentally, they are putting out my new record physically right now. But back in the day, when they told me no, one of the reasons they told me no is because they said my songs didn't have any form. They were just me rapping and I would just stop rapping whenever I wanted. I was rapping and would stop rapping at, like, 25 bars or 27 bars or 30 bars. When I started paying attention to songs, I realized "Oh. These songs on the radio, they all have a format", like 8 bars hooks or 16 bar verses. So, I learned about music more. I learned about the structure of music more. I learned how to control my voice more. I learned, from being in England and moving to America, that when you speak on the microphone, when you rap your songs or say your lyrics to people, the things that go over in America might not go over in England, because they know different things and watch different shows and have different experiences. I could be in America saying my punchlines and they're hitting, but then when I go over to Germany or England or Slovakia or wherever I've been and saying some of these punchlines, they're not hitting. And that made me become a better mc, because then I realized I had to write my rhymes in a way were universal, so that no matter where I was on the planet, when I spoke into the microphone, everyone would know what I was talking about. That all came from experience.
How do you feel like hip hop culture has evolved as your career has evolved? Who are some of the artists you have found to be the most inspiring?
So, how it's evolved or devolved or just changed. When I was coming up, there was more of music was a message. I felt like you had to be original or else you got banished from hip hop. If you look at the beginnings of hip hop and all of the different groups, they're all super different from each other and are all actually saying something. They all had a message. As hip hop went on and on, it seems like music with a message got taken out, and nowadays if you listen to the radio...as a matter of fact, if I tell someone I do hip hop and am an mc, I have to tell them more than that, because they might just assume that my hip hop is like the hip hop on the radio. And a lot of the hip hop on the radio...I don't want to say it's all bad, because it's not, but a lot of hip hop on the radio, I don't even let my own children listen to it. Back in the day, you had groups like Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and these groups all had a message. They were all saying something. And I don't want to say that none of the groups and artists now don't have a message, but it's a lot less, like way less, and that's very unfortunate. At the same time, if you look at, like with every generation, if you look at the music they listen to compared to what their parents listen to, the parents are always like "Oh, we don't like the music you listen to." I often think about that. Like, am I just now in a situation where I'm older and looking at the music the younger kids are listening to and it doesn't gel well with me? I often think about that, but at the same time, there's a lot of negativity in the music now and I don't appreciate that. I don't feel like whoever are the higher-ups or radio people or whoever is in charge of getting music out there, I don't feel like they are doing a good enough job of getting a diversity or variety of what's really out there. You can have negative music but if you have negative, there's also whole other half that's positive that is not getting the same light right now. I feel like that's one of the reasons why I'm here. To kind-of bring balance to the force.
You recently released your book 52 Laws of Freedom, which aims to lead readers towards a liberating and self-fulfilling internal freedom. What can you tell me about your spiritual philosophy and how you came to write the book, as well as your journey in discovering and embodying those laws for yourself?
So my spiritual philosophy...I don't subscribe to any religion. The reason I don't subscribe to any religion is because I have studied a lot of them and the common theme I was able to find in all of them was love. So, if you are going to call my religion anything, my religion would be love. And I always wanted all of the religious leaders to get into a room and kind-of debate it out, but that has never happened. I just feel like everyone can't be right, but everyone is not wrong. The main thing in every one of those religions, whether you are talking about the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the main thing in all of those books is love. And that was always very clear to me. My parents were Rastafarians and Rastafarians teach all about love. They aren't Rastafarians anymore. When we moved to America, they let that go, but at the same time that's where I began to learn and understand about love. That's what my parents were teaching me about. And in life, just as I was traveling around, I would come up with these very clear ideas and would start writing them down. After a while, i looked up and I had...I had more than 52. I probably had 67 of them and just narrowed them down to the clearest, most potent thoughts and these thoughts were things that helped me out in life. I know because they helped me that they can help other people, so I decided to write a book called 52 Laws of Freedom. I put each law in the book, and within the law, I say where I got the law from...what I was doing at what point in my life to make me come up with that law. I also have a rhyme that I probably wrote that is parallel to the law. So, if the law is about being your best self, the rhyme is about being your best self. And then I break down where exactly, at what point in my life, that I was able to find out why that law has to be a law.
It all stems from my religion being love and trying to not only be the best version of myself, but show other people that they can be the best version of themselves. Because I know when I look out in the world today, there are a lot of people who are anxious and depressed and there's a lot of negativity. If you ask how people are doing, a lot of times people don't have that much to say that's great. I feel like a majority of the time I'm positive, so I just want to make sure I'm giving my gift to the world to help other people be positive or help other people shine their light, so they can make more people shine their light and just for all of us to be better. It has to start somewhere. Someone has to do it, and every day when I look out in the world, there's just a lot of negativity, and I refuse to be that. That is where my vision of love comes from and where 52 Laws of Freedom comes from and where, essentially, Cymarshall Law comes from.
You will also be releasing your new album on June 13th entitled The Peaceful Warrior 2: Raw Self-Expression. Can you talk a bit about the making and recording of the album, as well as some of the people you worked with on the album? What do you hope listeners take away from it?
The album is called Peaceful Warrior because I feel like everyone has 2 sides to them- a peaceful side and a warrior side. I'm very clear about that on the album, so there are songs that are really thoughtful, but there are also songs that are more on the, I wanna say aggressive side, as far as getting my point across and telling the world who I am and not allowing the world to tell me who I am. I feel like a lot of times the warrior in people gets shut down because they let tv tell them who they are, they let their friends tell them who they are, they let their partners tell them who they are. And when that happens, your true identity and the person you are supposed to be...the coolness about you, that gets diluted. The world tries to mold you into what society wants you to be. Me being a warrior, I am fighting back and making sure I'm putting my stamp on the world and not allowing the world to shape me into anything besides who I am and what I really want to be. So that would be the warrior side, and the peaceful side would be me being more thoughtful and expressing my feelings, whether it's me being hurt or just me being reflective on how the world is. As far as who's on the album, I have Sadat X on the album from a group from back in the day called Brand Nubian, a really positive group. I have Planet Asia on the album, who is one of the West Coast legends, I would say. DJ Rhettmatic, also a West Coast legend. I have Ramson Badbonez on the album, who's from England, and I also was on his album recently that just came out. I have AthenA from Atlanta on the album. She's a female lyricist. I haven't heard her on anything before, but when I heard her on one of my friend's songs, I thought she was so amazing and wanted to put her on the album to give her some light. I have a Jamaican artist named Linton Kush on the album, whom I have worked with several times. Kafeeno is on the album. He's a singer who has done really well in the industry for himself. I have a singer named Christine Elise on the album. I did a show with her, and she's this wonderful singer who's like jazz, R&B, and all these things and is just wonderful. The album is produced by Slimeline Mutha out of Rochester in the United Kingdom. I've been working with him for about 20 years now and this is our second album together. I really think it's my best album yet.
You've released two singles ahead of the album's release, the most recent one being "Broken Dreams". How did you go about choosing those particular songs to release ahead of the album and what can you tell me about the songs?
The first song, "Blowtorch", features Planet Asia and DJ Rhettmatic. The reason I came out with "Blowtorch" first was because when I was young and didn't know how albums were supposed to be presented, I felt like any song could come out first. I realized by talking to some A&R's that they kind-of want your street record first. Your harder record. Your more aggressive record. Your record that would kind-of rile people up to say "I'm here". When I first heard that beat, it reminded me of like an old-school Wu-Tang beat and I just love Wu-Tang Clan. When I heard it, I just knew what I had to do. I needed to make a song that if the members of the Wu-Tang Clan heard it, they would respect it (laughs)! That was my goal going into that song: to make something raw and gritty and from the heart, so when people heard it, they got that old school hip hop feel of something authentic and raw. The reason I went in that direction is because, kind-of what I was telling you earlier, as far as the authentic things not necessarily being on the radio nowadays, I just wanted to go straight to the heart of hip hop. And, like, when you hear it, it's hip hop. It has hip hop written all over it and it reminds you of the earlier days, like the Wu-Tang days. Planet Asia is on the song, and he's a well-respected mc from the West Coast that I have been listening to for a long time. I feel like it's important for you to make songs with people that are at a high caliber, because a lot of people respect him. If I'm able to get on a song with him and do really well, then people would look at me and say "Oh. He can rap just as well as that legend” or something along those lines. And then DJ Rhettmatic is also a West Coast legend. Because I'm from New Jersey, my core fan base is on the East Coast, but my manager lives in California. I've been going back and forth to California a lot recently, and to build my West Coast fan base more, we felt it was a good idea to have two West Coast legends on the songs, so we got Planet Asia and DJ Rhettmatic from The Visionaries. I'm very thankful to them and am glad that song is doing really well.
I'm also doing a video game where I'm doing the voice of the main character and also make the music for it. These guys are from England and are called 4886 Studios and the video game is called SoLo. Because I'm doing the work with them, and we've been doing so much work in the studio for their video game, they said, "Is there anything we can do for you?". And these guys are awesome when it comes to making videos and anything having to do with technology. So I told them "Yeah. You can make me a video", so they made a video. They hit pause on the video game and made me a video with the tools that they had and it came out incredible. So, we have a video for "Blowtorch" and they made it and it's out now. That's how that first single came about.
The second single, "Broken Dreams", features Sadat X. The song was finished, and the song came about just from Slimline Mutha sending me beats like he does. And when I heard it...some beats, for me, they make me want to just put my heart in between the paper's lines, and that was one of the beats that made me feel like that. My feelings might have been hurt that day. I think I may have maybe gotten into it with a friend or something. When I have all of these emotions and very clear thoughts in my head, if you give me a certain type of beat, it's very easy for me to just pour my heart out on the page. I was thinking about that and then kind-of getting into it with a friend. Then I was thinking about what we were talking about earlier, about how a lot of people have broken dreams. About them wanting to be something when they were younger and then getting into their older years and being adults and having kids or getting married, divorced, their parents dying, and a lot of times people stop pursuing their dreams and passions because life starts kicking their ass. Between, like, the miscommunication I had with a friend and me looking around at other people's broken dreams, it felt right. It felt like the world also needed something real to hear. A lot of the Hip Hop on the radio is just party this, party that, and they're talking about doing drugs and "Broken Dreams" is not that. It's just real, If you listen to it, it's going to touch your heart. I had that song and then one of the times I went to California and was performing, I was doing a really good job, I suppose. And there was this guy who is a DJ. He DJs for Sadat X and he saw me. My manager calls him and his friends the "high five guys", because as I was rapping, they kept high-fiving each other. It went from that guy enjoying my set to him saying, "I want you to do a song with Sadat X". So, we sent the song to Sadat X, and he loved it and got on the song. We decided, because he's Sadat X, how could we not. As a matter of fact, let me stop. It wasn't going to be my second single, but I played it to my brother who is in England, and he was like "Cy, this has to be your second single, because people who come from where we come from are going to love it and respect it", so I was like "Alright. Let's stop and make that the second single." We shot the video on the Rocky steps in Philadelphia, at the Philadelphia Art Museum, so the video is pretty cool, as well.
You recently took a trip to Japan to present your new book and perform some songs from the new album. Can you talk a bit about the trip and the response that you received when you visited?
Oh, I LOVE Japan! I was telling someone today, like, it's one of the places that I would actually move. I didn't know that until I had been there. The reception was great! So, I didn't know who I would be performing for and was totally clueless, but I just made sure I knew my stuff. It turned out that I performed for some Japanese people and a lot of expats that were over there, which was cool, because they don't get to see Americans doing what we do all of the time, even though some of them are Americans and just decided to live there for whatever reason. But it was such a great experience, because I'm just starting this journey of presenting my books as opposed to just only performing my hip hop songs. That was one of the first presentations I did, and for it to be in Japan was huge. They really made me feel like I couldn't stop doing it. They were super recepetive and it went super well and it helped people. And my son was there, who is 18, and part of the reason I went to Japan was for his graduation present. He said to me after we left that that was his favorite part of the trip, because I speak life into him every day. All day, I teach him about everything I can. He was like, to see me do that for other people and for other people to be receptive of it, that it kind-of changed him as a person. That was the best part of the trip for me, as well, and it was great to see people first hand and look them in the eyes and just speak to them. And when you see a light bulb go off in their head and then they ask you a question and you're able to fill in the blanks for them...I love it. It made me feel very purposeful and they let me know that I couldn't stop and should charge more in that direction. I feel like it's going to be the extension of hip hop that I was kind-of looking for, because as much as I love hip hop, I'm not going to jump around on stage forever, but I can inspire people to be better and motivate people and encourage people forever and tell people about the greatness inside of them forever. So, that's what I got from Japan. Besides that, it’s a beautiful country that embodies a lot of strength on its own. And you could actually see that in the people, which I loved. A lot of Japanese people, unlike in America, they really stuck to themselves. As we were riding the train and stuff, in America if you're riding the train, you're getting on and off the train and people are kind-of, like, all in your face and looking at what you're doing. But in Japan, it seemed like everyone stuck to themselves. it's almost like they didn't care that we were there. I know they did, but they were just paying attention to themselves and what they had to do. That was refreshing.
Minding their own business!
Exactly! Exactly!
How do you stay grounded amidst the chaos and negativity that exists in the world? What gives you hope for the future?
That's a great question! For the first part, I meditate every day. And I tell people, whoever wants to listen, that I'm fighting for my life. Because, as I said, when you turn on the television or go on social media or talk to people, a lot of times people don't have the greatest things to say. So, I have to make sure I set the tone for myself. I'm definitely one of those people where as soon as I wake up, the first thing out of my mouth consistently is "Thank you". I don't even really want to talk to anyone before I get my own space, whether that's 30 minutes or an hour. The first words out of my mouth every day are "Thank you" and then I get out of my bed, pray, and creep downstairs and meditate. And then I start my day. Every time I don't do that, I can clearly see the difference in my day. It's completely necessary because there is just so much going on. As soon as your day starts, if you are able to quiet your mind and set your tone for yourself and even talk positively to yourself, which I do...like, I tell myself "I'm going to have a good day". I feel like everything is energy, so even me saying the words "I'm going to have a good day" is setting in motion the occurrences up front for me to have a good day. A lot of people, they just don't do this at all. They just don't know. It's not like it's a bad thing that they don't do it, they just don't know. The reason I know is because my parents taught me since they were Rastafarians and came from praying and meditating.
I also have a podcast, and these are the things I talk about, and I just want people to know that we do have tools out there because they don't know. There are things we are fighting every day and it could be the food we're eating having GMOs in it or the things we're watching on the news being negative, and these kinds of things. When I say I'm fighting for my life by meditating, that's what I mean. As soon as you open your front door, it could be the smog from the air or just anything trying to pull you down. You literally have to fight for your life. The way I fight for my life is by praying, and by praying I don't mean asking for anything. I feel like the greatest way to pray is to show gratitude and stay thankful. I look around at the things that I have and make sure I'm saying thank you for them, whether it's the air I breathe or being able to walk or being able to see or having a healthy and strong heart and brain. I'm saying thank you until I get tired of saying thank you. And sometimes, even more than praying and meditating, I literally write down the things that I am thankful for. I have notebooks around me right now full of thank you's from top to bottom. Just of anything I can think of. I do this because I know that everything is energy, from my thoughts to my words to my actions. And the more I put in the action, even if I'm writing it down, it's helping me set the tone for the rest of my days and rest of my life. And then when other people see me acting like this, they feel like it's ok for them to do it, as well. I've seen myself positively affect people as others have been able to positively affect me.
As far as the second part of your question, what gives me hope is that I always go with my children. My children are...I thank God for them every day. I have four great kids and you can see the light in their eyes from a distance. They give me hope. At the same time, before them I had hope because i just knew that hope existed. I really believe in the power of love. Like, I really, really believe. And sometimes people talk about love, and I don't want to downplay what anyone else thinks, but I just don't think there's anything more powerful than love. I feel like love has the power to conquer all. I've seen it through miracles and have seen it conquer all. In my household, I don't even allow my kids to say the word hate. That's the biggest curse word here, because I just know that there is power from everything from your thoughts to your words. I don't even let them say hate. It's just love. I see it in everything. I'm so thankful that I haven't allowed life to take that away from me. Some people don't even believe in love because they've had hard lives. They don't think it exists or think miracles exist. I'm here to show that it does.
You have quite a bit of stuff coming up in the year ahead. What can you tell me about what's next for you?
After the album, which comes out June 13th, I'm performing at...I don't know if this is going to be my biggest show in America yet. It might be though. But I will be performing at Rhyme Fest LA on August 16th in the LA Coliseum, which is huge. That's going to be one of my biggest shows to date. And then I have another album coming out at the end of this year called Undiluted with an artist I mentioned earlier called Ramson Badbonez from the UK. So, that's coming up. Then my podcast. I'm doing it right now, but am about to revamp it and redo it and that's coming in September. I've also written ten children's books and currently looking for an illustrator for. As soon as I'm able to get someone to illustrate these books, then they're coming out. They're ten children's books called Cyvision and the 52 Mystical Laws. It's like my book now, but I have created a children's version and have created it into a ten book series.
Interview: Ian Fisher
Singer-songwriter Ian Fisher, with his deeply personal songwriting, uses songwriting to tell stories and convey his thoughts and emotions on a wide array of topics. Born in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, Fisher started writing songs at 13 and played his first show at 14. He became interested in politics in high school and was outspoken in his political views and studied politics in college. Disillusioned with the political landscape of the US, Fisher moved abroad to Vienna at 21, where he finished school and focused on songwriting. In 2010, he moved to Germany (Berlin), where he established himself as a singer-songwriter, and has achieved success in the German and Austrian indie-folk scenes. Over the years, Fisher has put out over a dozen albums, with his latest album, Go Gentle, being perhaps his most personal album to date.
Go Gentle is an album about grief, resilience, and a topic with which Fisher says many in today’s society aim to avoid discussing-death. After watching his mother battle cancer for 26 years, she passed away in 2023. Fisher wrote the songs that would become his latest album, both while she was battling cancer and in the aftermath as a way to process his feelings. The album is a deeply reflective snapshot of Fisher’s views on death, mortality, and being more open to having conversations around death, as well as leaving his songs open to others who may be going through the same experiences to find solace and comfort. You can connect with Ian Fisher via the following links. You can purchase his new album, as well as merch HERE. Photo credit: Talitha Lahme. Head to his website to find upcoming European tour dates.
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What can you tell me about growing up in Missouri, getting into songwriting at 13, and deciding you wanted to pursue music?
I mean, it was just a series of little happenstance mistakes and dreams all mixed. Like most things in life. But yeah, when I was a kid, we always had a bass guitar in my basement. My dad used to play in the 70’s. And so we had one down there that he never played, and I always found it interesting that it was just sitting down there. I would pick it up and pick it with a penny now and then as a kid. Then, I was at some grade school dance and I asked this girl, Katie Shue, if she would be my girlfriend. I was like 12 or something. She said no and I was just heartbroken and thought to myself, “I bet she would have said yes if I was in a band” (laughs). Instead of bumming, I just went around and told all my friends that we were starting a band next week. I went out and bought a bass guitar and they were all very surprised that I did that. And so, yeah, I started playing then and luckily, my motivation to continue has become a lot more deep. Soon after that, I started writing songs and just wrote a lot. I feel like that was kind of my way of, I don’t know…yelling out into the darkness and seeing if there was kind of an echo out there. I just kept doing it and doing it and eventually, the band broke up and I did solo stuff. Then I moved to Europe and started playing more and more there.
Early on, your music was a lot more political and later veered away from being overtly political. How would you describe the evolution of your songwriting? What kinds of things inspire you with your lyrics?
Yeah. It just has a lot to do with personal experiences. It’s not only that. Sometimes I’m inspired by a book or someone else’s personal experience. But largely what I have written about, in the last 10 years or so, is about personal experiences. And a lot about, I don’t know, internal struggles. I view that as political, as well. The individual is part of society. I mean, like, I view a lot of the stuff that I sing about as still being political. Often I find that most of the interviews I do end up being about politics, as well. I studied politics. And I don’t think that being political has to be completely overt. It can also be just in the way you live and the way you think about things. Granted, I would like to see my side of the aisle become more active in different ways. It’s just unfortunate that there’s no real political representation for the left anywhere in the Western world at the moment. It just kind of feels like a big thunderstorm without a weather vane. It’s really a prequel to an authoritarian regime.
You have lived in many places throughout your career-Austria, Germany, Canada, and the US. What kind of influence do you feel that the places you have lived have had on your music and perspective on things in general?
Yeah, definitely. The first main impact that I have found, aside from the roots I already had growing up in Missouri, was that when I moved abroad, I felt liberated to embrace aspects of my American cultural identity that I once associated with a political identity that I didn’t want to be a part of. Because, at least pop country has kind of been commandeered by conservative politics, since, like, the Nixon campaign of 1968. I didn’t like that as a teenager. But once I moved abroad, I was able to view it more or less like something in a Petrie dish. I think that changed a lot. And also the introspection of being in Vienna, which is, like, the home of psychology, where everything is analyzed and everyone thinks thoughts within thoughts. It’s not so apparent as Midwestern culture. I mean, of course, people here feel and think things that are the opposite of what they say. Very often I don’t feel like, when in a conversation, people are, like…not everyone, but some…but it’s not like a cultural trait for everyone to be dissecting what someone might be implying by what they say. And in Vienna, that is the culture. Like, when you have a conversation, at least me and a lot of people I know, it’s all about reading between the lines of what’s actually being said. I don’t feel like that’s so much of a thing here. Not as much anyway. Maybe some people do, but it’s so hard for me to read people here sometimes. Because even though I’m from it, I’ve grown away from it so much.
You just released your latest album Go Gentle, about the power of grief and the resilience of the human spirit. Having written the songs while your mom was dying, as well as after her death, in what ways do you feel that making the album helped you to heal and cope with her death?
I feel like it forced me to confront it. And I think that if I hadn’t done this, then I would have kind of, like, put it in a drawer and hid it away and not have dealt with it. Because I think that’s what most people do. That’s what I would have done if I didn’t do this album and I don’t think that’s healthy. I think it’s very much an aspect of Western society. Not just American, but also Western European and many other societies. I feel like in writing these songs and recording them and now in playing them live, it’s a constant confrontation with what happened. And, I don’t know. It kind of gives her death and her suffering a purpose, in a way. Because through her suffering, and my and my family’s suffering, I feel like in putting it in art this way, it is somehow a vessel that other people could pour their emotions and their personal experiences into. Because it’s the way I wrote these songs to be intentionally structured to not be so specific that it would exclude others from being able to relate to them. I was hoping that other people would also see themselves and their experiences in these songs. And I think that with many of them, in the live performances that we’ve done, it does seem like people feel that way. And in bringing these to the stage and to the world, in recorded form, maybe it gives meaning and purpose to all of this.
How do you think your views on death have changed in going through the process of being with your mom as she was dying and processing her death?
I feel like, since I was a kid, I’ve always viewed death as something that’s not as cut and dry as we often talk about it. I mean, I don’t even necessarily believe in an afterlife or anything like that but am more just pragmatic in the sense of when you walk out that door, the memory of you and the influence of you on my life, at least however little or much that may be, it’s there, in the sense of, like, consequence. Like every action has a consequence. Every person’s existence has some type of influence on those around them and the circumstances of the world, really, in some way, shape, or form. And so, just because someone dies, it doesn’t mean that they cease to exist. It’s almost as if, when you throw a stone in a pond, just because the stone has sunk to the bottom doesn’t mean that the ripples stop. I’ve always viewed death that way, that the people that die are never fully gone. And especially in losing my mom now, I see her very much in me. And those times when I feel like something is haunted or something like that, are the times that I actually welcome wholeheartedly, because if there are ghosts and are ghosts of people that you love, then bring it on (laughs). I think that it’s beautiful. I don’t know if you believe in angels and all of that shit, but they’re ghosts too (laughs).
In what ways do you try to connect with your audience and fans through your songwriting and using music as a way of storytelling?
I don’t know. That’s a hard question. I just try to be honest and put things in a way that others can feel it. And sing it like I mean it.
Having played solo and with a band, what do you enjoy about each experience? And what can you tell me about your band?
I enjoy playing solo and also with a band. I feel like in playing solo, sometimes I don’t have anything to hide behind. So sometimes it makes for an even more vulnerable performance, which can be nice, especially with these songs. But I do find that with a band, musically it’s so much better because of the spectrum of sound that we can achieve. The lows and the highs. It’s just much more dramatic, as opposed to just guitar and voice. But what I find very different with touring with a band, as opposed to touring solo, is the personal aspect of it. It’s just a lot more fun with your friends. And I always play with slightly different bands when I go on tour. This time I’ve taken three friends, from Germany, Austria, and South Africa. They’re not making any money one’s making any money (laughs). But yeah, it’s just a 4-piece for this tour. Just big enough to fit in 2 beds and one car!
You have talked about how you feel that touring and playing shows is the best way to connect with your fans, rather than through social media. What can you tell me about your thoughts on social media, as well as creating your own fan club?
I personally despise social media. It’s really…it could potentially be a great thing. I remember when Facebook started and was less algorithmic and less pay-to-play and you would actually see posts of your friends. It had more of a community vibe. If it were like that, then sure. And if all of the money and data wasn’t going to neo-fascists, then sure. I think we have to change something in this society, and also legally and governmentally, to deal with this, because this is leading us towards autocracy. I feel like, on a financial level too, it’s centralizing so much wealth in the hands of so few. And this is how all societies end. It’s exactly how the Roman Empire fell and how so many things have fallen apart. Too much money is in the hands of too few private-sector people. And that’s what all of this digital revolution is doing. And so I feel like a hypocrite for being on any Zuckerberg-owned media platform. I don’t even stoop so low as to get involved with anything that Musk is involved in. As soon as this tour is over, I’m hoping that I can find a way to minimize my activity on any of those platforms. But it’s just so necessary now. It’s past the tipping point and such a ubiquitous thing. I think that personal connection is really important, and if it’s going to be online, then I think that things like Patreon or the Fanclub thing I do in Germany can work. And newsletters help. I don’t know what to do.
Is there anyone you are listening to right now that you are really excited about and inspired by?
Yeah. Let’s see. There’s a band from Louisville that I think is really great called Bendigo Fletcher. I mean, Adrianne Lenker’s great, but everybody knows that. There’s this artist in Nashville who’s going to be something soon called Kaelynn Hayes. She’s great. She gave us the link to the album she’s working on so hopefully we can listen to it in the car tomorrow.
I read that you were writing songs last month with some fellow artists in Nashville. Are you starting to work on a new album?
No. It was just for shits and giggles and to see what would come of it. There were a couple of good songs I was writing with this woman named Leah Marlene who was on American Idol a couple of years ago. We wrote a really good song. One I’d stand by and think will be something for her. I don’t know that I wrote any songs for me. I don’t need them (laughs).
Do you like writing songs with other people or do you prefer to write on your own?
I actually prefer to write them on my own, but I think that sometimes, especially around an album release or the lead-up to one or the immediate aftermath, I just feel so empty that it can be helpful to go to a certain room at a certain time and have the pressure to do something then and there.
What has the live response been so far to the new songs and album?
Fundamentally different from the previous albums. There’s not a night that goes by where I don’t find myself in a conversation about someone’s personal story of grief. So, that’s a very different vibe than when I was singing about heartbreak or whatever. Or even politics back in the day. It’s just such a universal thing that everyone can connect to on some level and something that we all neglect in our society when it comes to talking about it. I’m hoping that it’s been cathartic, as well, for others and not just me.
What’s next for you after this tour?I don’t know yet. This will take me to the middle of April and then I need to find out what I want to do for the rest of my life (laughs)!It seems like in 2025 everybody’s just amazed that we’re even still alive. It’s a strange time to plant the trees of tomorrow’s fruits.
Interview: Danny Saber
Michael Hutchence was a musical icon who left this world too soon. The lead singer of the wildly popular Australian rock band INXS, he also branched out to record solo material, and his solo album was posthumously released 2 years after his death. Unreleased recordings were found in a tape locker in London in 2006 that was ultimately entrusted to esteemed producer Danny Saber. Saber is an LA-based record producer, audio engineer, remixer, multi-instrumental musician, and former member of Black Grape and Agent Provocateur. He has worked with a vast and diverse mix of artists, from Madonna, David Bowie, U2, The Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, Public Enemy, and of course Michael Hutchence. He and Hutchence developed a close friendship upon meeting in 1995, when Saber relocated to the UK, and remained close until Hutchence’s death. Having listened to and fleshed out some of the unreleased ideas and material that Hutchence left behind, the track “One Way” was released on April 5th, 20 years in the making!
‘One Way’ is the culmination of nearly two decades of work,” says Saber. “One of the fundamental reasons for releasing this music is to allow the fans to hear Michael’s voice on something new and fresh, offering a glimpse into what might have been, and, in turn, reawakening millions of people who may have simply forgotten about him.” (source: press release)
“Michael first contacted me in 1995 soon after the release of my album It’s Great When You’re Straight,” recalls Saber, referring to the UK #1 album by his band Black Grape with Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder. “Michael was a huge fan of my record and wanted to find the right sound for a solo record, a sound that would galvanize all the success he had with INXS and allow him to establish himself as a solo artist and spread his creative wings outside the confines of being the frontman of one of the most successful bands in the world.” (source: press release)
“I set about reviewing the recordings to find out if there was enough of a quality for some sort of release,” says Saber. Meanwhile, a documentary about Hutchence’s life was released in Australia and New Zealand, appropriately titled The Last Rockstar (2017), which included some snippets of these unfinished tracks. “I have been working towards bringing this music to the public for over 20 years,” he adds. “While some portions of these songs were featured in the documentary, the fully mastered versions had never been released.” Until now. (source: press release)
“One Way” was born from one of Hutchence’s discovered cappella vocal recordings. Saber was mindful to maintain the spirit of Hutchence’s sound and imprint on the track, while also putting his own spin on it. Through these songs, he hopes to continue Hutchence’s musical impact and open his music up to an even broader audience. “One Way”, as well as the track “Save My Life”, will be released in mid-May, via Boss Sonics label, on a 10” picture disc produced by Danny Saber.
You started playing guitar at 12 and then transitioned into everything else you do now-producing, remixing, writing, putting tacks together, and such. What can you tell me about your childhood and developing those skills and your love for music?
Yeah. It was, really, kind of weird. I was talking to somebody else about that, who asked me something similar. And it's like, when you were a kid, at least back then, compared to now...if you're a kid now and you want to do something, there's a clear pathway and so much information, right? I remember getting into guitar and just the whole sort of mystique around getting distortion. The only way you could figure anything out was like if you had a friend who had a distortion pedal or, god willing, a Marshall! Nobody had a Marshall (laughs)! So, the point was, there was so much mystique and I think for me, it was very organic because I saw a poster of Jimi Hendrix at 11. I worked my dad for two years, like "Oh, I have to get a guitar"! And then I had a friend down the street who had a guitar. There was a store out here called Zody's, which was like the Walmart I guess of the 70's and 80's, and they sold everything. You could buy a recliner, a stereo system, groceries, and you could buy a shitty electric guitar. He had this Les Paul and I used to drive him crazy and played it more than he played it! I finally got my hands on a guitar at 13 and was obsessed with it. I just got so into it. I think the other thing that helped a lot was that, by the time I was 15, there was a little congregation of musicians in my high school. They accepted me and I just fit in with those people and they just kind of let me in, so that helped. I was always around people who were older than me and better than me. It's weird when you're that young and trying to figure this out and realize this is something you really want to do. At the time it was like "Who can play whatever the best, note-for-note?", and I never had those kinds of skills. I was too ADD, or whatever, so I'd learn the beginning of a song but then I'd sort of go off on my own and where I could take it.
I think one of the other cool things that sort of was an early sign...this was way before having any equipment. We're talking, like, the early 80's. I would take two boom boxes and would lay a guitar part down on one and then stick it between the amp and the other one and keep going back and forth recording and making these layered seven-part guitar layered cassettes. I always had a knack for that. One of my mantras now is that there's so much focus on how to play, but nobody ever talks about what to play. What to play and the choices you make, that's where the artistry comes in. That's with any art, whether it's you as a writer or a painter or whatever. When you can transcend what's inside and absorb all of the things you've seen and heard and felt and then spit it back out in some form of consistent extension of your personality, that's the goal. Finding your style. That's really what it is, your personality coming through. And I think that is something that is greatly missing in the world today. It's just the nature of the world we live in. Again, with kids, everything I found, I discovered and half the things we were looking for weren't even real. But it set you off on this journey and mission whereas now I can just Google it and I know everything. It doesn't leave any room for...that's where all the advances come in mankind, either from mistakes or accidents. And then having the command to be able to grab them and then refine them and then do something with them. And all of that seems to be squeezed out, which leads us to Michael Hutchence. That's one of the main things about this music when you hear his voice again and the way I've tried to approach it, is that it reminds us of that hopefully. He reminds us of what greatness may be. And I'm not saying the songs themselves, but just his overall...what he stood for, what he was about, and what he was able to deliver. That's what I'm hoping for and it seems to be working. The response has been really positive. Just like "Remember this guy? Remember how he used to roll?", and hopefully it will inspire some people.
You have said that early on, in having so many different kinds of people with different ideas of what they wanted coming to you, that you really began to bring things to fruition. When you started out, did you have a vision of what you wanted your sound and process to be or do you feel that working with so many different kinds of artists and people shaped you and helped you grow into the process and sound you have now? Or was it a bit of both?
The latter. All I knew, and all I ever wanted, was just to be able to somehow play guitar and live from it. As a youngster, I went through so many phases, right?! And that's really insightful, what you said. I'm a product of everything I've ever heard and all of the people I've ever worked with. I think the one thing I had going for me is my personality is that I was just really open-minded, even young. And then I got my hands on a 4-track. And then as the equipment became accessible, I got a drum machine. Well, the first thing I got that wasn't a guitar was a JUNO-106. I got a synthesizer. I was about 16 then, maybe 17, and had been playing guitar for about 4 years and I started answering ads. Because the thing you notice is, like, if you're a guitar player and want to find some way to play with people, there are a thousand guitar players looking for bands. And I don't know if they still even have it, but they used to have this thing called The Recycler and it would be like "Musicians looking for bands" and "Bands looking for musicians". And if it was "Musicians looking for bands", there were a thousand guitar players. And then if you look for "Bands looking for musicians", there would always be, like, this guitar player that doubles on keyboards, or something like that. So, I kind of intuitively knew. Like, I could play piano a bit because I was in this jazz band class in high school and ended up switching from guitar to piano because of the same thing. There were 15 guitar players in the band and no piano player. So, if I played piano, I'd get to play every song. If I played guitar, which I still did, I'd maybe play once or twice a week. I think music is such a great...that's where I hope to take this. Especially with all of the tension and drama in the world and all of the toxic shit between people. Music erases all of that because it's all about cooperation and does it sound and feels good. And if you look at all of the barriers that have been broken down, at least in this country, especially in relation to race, music was always the first thing that put the cracks in the walls for them to open up. It's as simple as like, in your neck of the woods, when the Motown bands/artists would come down and they tried to separate the kids, they couldn't do it. When the band came down, the music took over. And the same with the Stax artists and bands. Those are the moments and the results of that are a big part of why music is so important.
I think, too, why things are different is look at what's held up as the standards of success. When I was growing up and you asked "Who's the best singer in the world?", you'd be like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, or whoever. And now it's people winning talent shows. It's the kid who won the high school talent show. What's being held up as the standard of success has shifted so much! But you were so spot on. It was completely just having access to people. And then I started working with rappers, because, again, it's the same thing of "Who wants you?". In the '80s, everything in LA was, like...and I was in one of those bands where I have pictures of me wearing spandex and Capezio and have puffy hair-a poodle haircut" (laughs). It's just what you did. But I never fit into that world. And we were always a little different. I was in an all-white band with a Black singer trying to do, like, Journey in the 1980's. It was like "You're never going to get signed" and "They'll never play you on the radio". That's how crazy and different the world was back then. But that, to me, made perfect sense. I looked at it like, "Yeah, but we're the only people doing this". That's how much it's shifted. But then I started hearing Jane's Addiction and Public Enemy and started meeting some guys who wanted to do rap and putting beats together. I had that sampler. Something in me knew this was where everything was going. Getting into sampling was huge for me. I was one of the first people to do it...well, like a normal person. Not like Peter Gabriel with some $150,000 Fairlight in 1980. The equipment began to be reasonably accessible. You didn't have to be a millionaire! They were still expensive but not outrageous. I was still wanting keys. If I was more hip-hop-inclined, I probably would have gotten an Emulator drum machine or something. In those days it was crazy because if you wanted to tune a sample or a loop, you'd have to load the sample. The sequencer was built in. It would take 45 seconds to load the sequencer to check it and the tempo was 80 bpm and you'd play it and it was too fast. Then you'd have to load the sampler portion back up and it would take, like, 3 hours to tune a loop! But in those days, the fact that you were able to even do it was amazing. The first professional job I ever got was getting called to a session and it was Bobby Womack and Leon Ware. All they wanted me to do was sample 4 hand claps, and they ran the tape and I just did a pass of hitting hand claps on the keyboard. It blew their minds because that would have taken a whole day to do in those days. I did it in 4 minutes. And now it's automatic. What it's all about for me is a spirit and philosophy of going for things and not trying to control everything and balancing that with allowing shit to happen. It's like the Bruce Lee "Be Water" kind of thing. Sometimes the water can take down a mountainside and sometimes it can just be placid in a glass.
You moved to the UK in 1993 and joined forces with Shaun Ryder to form Black Grape. What led you to move to the UK and what can you tell me about that time and being in that band, which helped you to grow and showcase your abilities?
It kind of all goes back to that poster of Jimi Hendrix. There were phases I went through. The first phase was the Hendrix phase and would have arguments with other friends. And they'd be into whoever. and I was like "How can you compare any of these guys to Jimi Hendrix?". To me it was ludacris, because there was nobody who played like him. And I learned he went to the UK and then my mom was British and I had a cousin that was over there who was the same age and we had grown up together. I kind of lived there when I was little but my dad went over there and tried it out but he was too hardcore NY to do it. He was a real hardcore, fast-talking NY guy and in the late 60's, it just wasn't his cup of tea. So we ended up in LA. What happened was that I started to get some traction in LA because I was in a band with a girl named Melissa and the band was called Issa Joone. We were doing sort of a world beat meets Nine Inch Nails, like sample bass music in the 80's. I think we got together in 1985 or 1986. We ended up getting a development deal with Chrysalis, but all of the people I worked with who got signed, the one thing that everything sort of came from never really got a shot. She was amazing. If you look up videos, you can see that I'm running two samplers and sequences. And this was a local band and we were just kids. I'd rent an extra sampler and had to bring my own rig and, in those days if you walked into the sound guy and said "I need 4 stereo di's" they'd look at you like you were out of your mind. That opened a door for me though because her dad was really cool. He was one of the owners of The Palace, a really legendary venue in LA, and had a really bitchin' house up in The Hills. In the back of the house was a little clubhouse and she had an 8-track and a d-50 and so we pooled all of our equipment and set up this little project studio. Her dad was cool though and gave me a clicker. It was a gated house. I was able to work there whenever I needed to. Having that ability to just be able to work and have access to a studio was cool. Then I started doing demos with other people and hooked up with Bronx Style Bob and he introduced me to Guy Oseary, who was trying to break into the business and who manages U2 now. He was in high school and had his little stable of artists and I was sort of the producer. And he was the first A&R guy at Maverick. He was an amazing whiz-kid genius 17-year-old. I was in this band called Proper Grounds that was sort or rap and metal and hip hop...imagine Metallica and Limp Biscuit but in 1991. So we were way in front of everything, too early.
We were the first band signed to Maverick, which got me a publishing deal with EMI. Then I got EMI to send me to England to go do some lighting because I had always wanted to go. Once I got over to England, it was just like "Oh my god!". I don't know how I knew to go there, but the whole mentality was different. All of that compartmentalization of music and "Are you a metal dude? Are you a rap dude?"...over there, with the charts, there's no Black chart and rap chart. These are just the charts. It's a good thing and a bad thing. I mean, if you look at the charts there, it's crazy! There will be a boy band and then David Bowie, or whatever it may be right?! The attitude, especially when I got to Shaun Ryder because he wasn't the first person I worked with, they were like me. They liked everything and weren't afraid to use it. If you started putting beats on stuff with guitars, 9 out of 10 guitar players were like "I don't want any of that stuff on my record dude." So I'm working with Black rappers but they love rock n roll. Sean Kennedy (from Proper Grounds), knew Zeppelin, he knew Sabbath, and all of that shit. We were blending all of that together over here, so when I got over there, it was just like "Oh shit!". Everybody...well not everybody, but a lot more people think this way, of like "Hey. Let's pool what we love, and if it works and it fits in, then we use it." We don't care how it looked or what people were going to think or what it was going to make us. It's so funny how uptight people were about shit like that back then. I mean, it probably sounds ridiculous, but it's true. But that's why now it's not that way, because people have the balls to just say "Fuck it. Let's just go for it." Even if you listen to, like, the first Beastie Boys record, Licence To Ill, and you listen to the way the guitars are mixed with the drum machine, it's so simple but revolutionary. And nobody had really done that. That was Rick Rubin and a bunch of kids. He was a college kid. But it was people who kind of had their ear to the street and knew what was up, and there were so many people that were like that, but there weren't a lot of people like that in positions to then produce records and have the right artists. That to me was like "Oh shit!". I remember when Aerosmith was so on the skids man! I remember when I heard "Walk This Way" for the first time with Run DMC. I mean, you knew who you were talking to. Anybody that loved it, was like "Cool!" and anybody that hated it was like "Oooookay". And a lot of it was just traditionalism. It wasn't racial. It really wasn't. It was more just like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SHIT MAN? THAT'S MY SHIT! YOU'RE RUINING MY MUSIC!" (laughs). I mean, Aerosmith didn't even know what they were doing. They didn't even want to do it, evidently. I think Rick talked them into it or something. But it revitalized their whole career. They were on the skids. I remember they played at the LA County Fair. And they were one of my favorite bands as a kid. There's so much there in that and that's really what made me go to England. And more than anything, it was just, like, curiosity. That was my dream, to just be able to go places. I never wanted to go anywhere as a tourist. I wanted to go there and have people and be working. That's the coolest way to go somewhere. The first time I got to travel and get paid to work, was that I actually got to go to Berlin and it was a really major thing because I had always been a huge Bowie guy. There's so much mystique in Berlin and I got to go there.
You met Michael Hutchence in 1995, as he was a fan of Black Grape and sought out your advice for his solo career. What can you tell me about meeting him for the first time and building a friendship with him?
Essentially, Michael was one of those people who always...if you're in a band and are the frontman, part of that is always, especially once you become really big and are trying to stay there, just staying up on what's going on. Michael was always very driven by that. He was always on this mission to just discover new shit. It gets to be a slippery slope when it's a) why are you doing it and b) when you lose sight of who you are, trying to chase something you don't need to be chasing because you're already who you are. When you become that big, as INXS was...and there's no fault in them. I'm not criticizing them. It's just a fact. I've seen it with every band. It's like if a guy's playing golf and someone's playing with the lead and they have a 9-shot lead. And then they start playing really conservatively and are playing not to lose, instead of playing to win, which is what got them the 9-shot lead. It's like that. And Michael was the kind of dude where if he had a 9-shot lead, he's putting the pedal down and trying to make it 18, and not like "As long as I win by 1, it's cool." That's what led him to me. The Black Grape record had a big impact over there on a lot of people, I guess. I think for him personally, when he heard it, I think something kind of clicked in him. I know he liked the Beck record a lot too.
I think Michael was hearing something, and again it comes down to not ruling anything out. I actually met him first on the phone, because I had been sent a demo. He had been working with Andy Gill. He’d been meeting with different people and working on stuff on his own and needed an outlet outside of the band for some of those reasons. But creatively more than anything. It's not that he didn't realize how good he was or how great he was. I don't think that's what mattered to him. What mattered to him was, and it was all of us...I think that's another thing that's changed so much. I was so motivated, and most musicians were motivated by "Try to impress your peers." That was a big part of what motivated you. And the rewards were the rewards. You knew if you got it right...like, if you win the golf tournament, you're going to get the money. But focus on winning the golf tournament and not on the money. And it's the same thing. You put in the work and beyond that mission, it's got to be something you're compelled to do, not something you're doing because you're trying to get something out of it. Especially with music. But again, I think everything is like that. That was a big part of it and when we finally got together, he already had done a few songs with Andy. I think they had about 6 songs and I was initially brought in because he still wasn't happy with the sound. There was something else he was looking for. Remember now, INXS was a band that was the, if not one of, the best bands of all time, taking dance music and rock n roll and mixing it together. Everything was wrapped in a beat. I think Michael never gets the credit either as a lyricist, because if you look at some of those songs...with all the INXS songs, the lyrics are all saying something. But a lot of them are wrapped in a dance beat. I mean, he was dealing with interracial relationships and some heavy shit. The devil and you know, all the classics...satan and witches and the dark lord and rock n roll and drugs and that's it. That's all there is, right? These days I'm sure people would have something to say about that, but those are the classics you know, when it comes to rock n roll lyrics. And he was able to put his own spin on it. He was a really smart guy too. He was educated in Hong Kong and was a pretty worldly guy by the time he was 18.
When we finally worked together, it was liberating for him because I'm a multi-instrumentalist and the only rule we had was there were no rules. If there was an idea, we'd try it and if he had an idea in his head, and he's singing me something, there may be a guitar part, and there was nobody who was going to be like "Dude, I'm the guitar player and you're the singer". All bands have that dynamic. It's very rare when they don't. Again, not faulting anybody. I said the other day, it wasn't about either/or. You needed both. It was just a way to flex some muscles you didn't get to maybe use as much as you wanted to in the other situation. But it wasn't an either/or situation. I've said it too that without INXS, none of this would matter and nobody would care. That's not what this is about. It's about reminding the world of him and leading them back to all the great stuff. I was on the internet this morning and there's a girl who's really cool actually. She sits and listens to songs, which a lot of people do that, but picked a couple of solo songs from the record I produced. She actually picked this one song "Baby It's Alright" and was kind of grooving to it and listening to it. It was just cool to see that because it was like "Wow. You picked those?". They're not the obvious ones. It was kind of nice that somebody was picking up on that. And the response to this first song...the only real room for any real criticism would be that more recently there's been some stuff that's been released that was probably never intended to be and probably never should have been. But I think it's fair to say that you have to maintain the quality and standard that Michael established over his career. There weren't any shitty INXS tracks. Every song on the record was a hit single. There's a standard, so there would have been no point in just throwing out some...trust me, there were probably 23 things out of 30 that will never be heard. Maybe someday, there may be some sort of, like, special feature just to get some insight into Michael's process or something, but never as a commercial-produced track. There was enough there, but it had to be worthy of being heard.
Photo by: Dean Karr.
Along those lines, what can you tell me about finding all of the unreleased music that Michael had left and sifting through everything to figure out what you could use and what you couldn't? Also, how did you go about staying true to his sound while also adding your own spin to the music?
It's important not to lose sight of one thing, which is that Michael died under really shitty circumstances and he was my friend. For me, it's not about coming out and making it all about like trying cash in. Trust me, nobody is getting rich here, at least not initially. It's 10" picture disc vinyl. So that's not what's going on here. And to feed right into your question...first of all, people have to remember everything we found was on 2-inch tape. It was in London and it all got sent to France, and I was made aware of it by the guy who was running Michael's estate....the day-to-day of his estate. I was the last guy to work with him, so they came back to me and were like "Hey. There might be something here" and I was like "Alright. Well, the first thing we have to do is just listen to it and see what the hell it is." It could have been anything. I had never really heard any of it. Andy had his little batch of songs and then me and Michael started writing, and the stuff that's on that V2 record is very different. This had nothing to do with any of that. It was like, well ok, this is all just ideas and a mess. I mean, Michael was a citizen of the world and he had his own studio in the south of France, so he was always...who knows? It wasn't, again, like "Oh, here's a song with Michael and an acoustic guitar." It wasn't like I got a bunch of finished mixes. With the solo record, Andy had been working on those songs and I got good, solid rough mixes and could really see what was there. It was pretty clear to see where we needed to go to find what was missing and it was a defined situation. This was really, really open-ended, so that's why I don't want people to think there was one way that it worked and that was it. It was all bets are off and all that really matters is going through each thing. And there were at least a couple that were songs that I found, that I had written with him and that I had forgotten about (laughs).
Again, it's not like it was lost. It just resurfaced and I just forgot about it, because it was sort of like he would come to LA and we write. The crazy thing is that every time we got together, we came out of it with something that got used. But there were a couple of things that we just never really got the chance to finish because you don't go in and necessarily write a song and then that's the end of it. It's like, you're constantly chipping away at it until the record comes out. "One Way", funny enough...I don't think it was the first track I messed with. I didn't finish this version of it where it's been done and laying around. I've been working on it up until a couple of months ago really, until I really kind of finalized it for this release. But there was a version of it in The Last Rockstar (Michael Hutchence documentary), and that was ready to be released. So it's this luxury of being able to keep chipping away at these things without screwing them up, hopefully. It's been a long period of time doing that and it's been cool. Funny enough, when I first started working on "One Way", you know what sort of the band of the moment was? The White Stripes! And if you listen to the opening of it and that kick drum thing, that was like "Oh shit!". Look how far that's changed. And not that they're not amazing, but you know what I'm saying? They weren't an unknown new band, but they were on the upswing. They had just become huge or were about to be. I scored a movie with Scott Caan and he took me to go see it at the El Rey.
You've already touched on it a bit, but could you talk a bit about the song "One Way" that you recently released, as well as the track "Save My Life", which will both be released on a 10" picture disc in mid-May?
So, in following up on that, we kind of came to this conclusion that "OK. It looks like there's some stuff here". We didn't know what we had at that point, but we knew that there were potentially a bunch of options for putting a Michael Hutchence package together. We also knew that when the V2 record came out, outside of Australia, it didn't really see the light of day because there was no one to promote it, right? At this stage of the game, I think we're talking 2008, or somewhere around there...2007? Definitely pre-2010. It was like, "Alright. Let's do a documentary." Nothing had been done up until that point. Really, up until now, there's only one thing that has been done. So, we wanted to use the songs to help fuel the documentary that would center around the discovery of the music and etc. And within that is a way to tell Michael's story. We knew we didn't want to go down the tabloid-y, sort of toxic road. It was still really close to when he had died. It was only 10 years after he'd died. It was difficult. It took 10 years almost to get the movie made. Within that, we went down the path of trying to get the film made and that was a journey in itself. We were trying to find the right director because with documentaries it's all about having the right director. I didn't know anything about getting a movie made. Like anything else, it was like "Oh. I can get a movie made, yeah." And then you learn, 10 years later, or whatever. But I have some traction in that world now, because I actually got a movie made. And I say that to anybody who has successfully had a film made. I don't care if it's the worst movie ever made. You have my respect. It's almost like a miracle or an act of God. So many things have to go right and having to deal with people where 9 out of 10 of them are looking for a reason to say no. That was sort of a big motivator of, you know, kind of dictating how the music got...you know in the sense where we're trying to get this movie made. Then we finally got traction with the guy at Channel 7 Australia, Mark Llewellyn. One of the things I didn't want to do, is if you go watch the movie, I'm actually working on the songs in the movie. Usually in those movies, they'll go back in and pretend like, you know, they're going to the studio and start playing with faders. I knew that we needed a studio to film in and I'd need to pay for the studio and there was no money. So, I used the film budget to help get the record made and created a connection between the two. There are some moments in there where it's, like, the moment of creation. And most of that is Michael's vocal up to a cappella, locked to a click, and just seeing where it could take me. I've done it with Bowie with a "Little Wonder" remix where I literally took his vocal, got rid of all the music, and just started playing to the vocal. And you can hear the chords. It's crazy because it's so rich and telling you where to go and allowing it to happen. Michael had that same sort of thing. He had a song called "Temptation" and that's one of the clips where it's like I was doing the string arrangements or something, but I could hear it all. Circling back to your earlier question, I think that is what was liberating for him, and Shaun told me the same thing, where it's like, they both came out of being in bands and everything has to be done by committee. And that's what a band is and is what it's supposed to be. It's just a different dynamic and as a singer, having everything kind of built and tailored around you, and not so many people to have to run things through, it's just another way of working that gives you something that maybe you won't be getting in the other situations. It's not an either/or thing. But I think that was a big motivating thing.
With "Save My Life" and "One Way", you can hear that coming through. You can hear it in the track. There's nothing on there, down to the little Jordan Peterson snippets that are there to serve the greater good, which is hopefully whoever's listening to it to enjoy it. That was a totally random thing, but it was sort of going back to that ‘90s Jane's Addiction sort of vibe, where they would drop samples...just weird random samples. And another thing that nobody has picked up on, is that in "The Middle Age" there's sort of a riff. It's almost a Zeppelin-y guitar riff. That is the guitar player from The Verve, Nick McCabe. I think that's one of the cool things about Facebook and the internet. I ended up talking to him, and I don't even know how we connected. We just sort of connected somehow on Facebook. And I mean that's the thing...my god. I wish Michael was here for that one because that would have meant a lot to him, to have Nick playing on something. And I've actually got another version of the song that I'm going to try to maybe do because Nick laid down so much stuff. And again, that was that luxury of working on a song over 10...15...I don't even know how many years it's been. I said, "Hey Nick. If you're feeling something...", so he gave me a pass of just him doing what he does. And I told him "Look. The middle part is missing something." I think most people look at Michael and think about if Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison had a love child, right? I see that and it's a true, legitimate thing, but I always saw so much Robert Plant in him. And he has his own key. Those guys all have their own key. They're all in between the notes. Michael really had a lot of Robert Plant-isms in his voice. So, I always was like "Let's ramp it up and see how hard we can go." Not like heavy metal or anything, but you know what I'm saying? Obviously, there are nods to INXS and what he did with the band and beats. But that's what I do naturally anyway, mixing guitars with beats, but maybe a little more on steroids. And you know what the coolest thing about this to me is? And I know Michael would have loved this. It's getting picked up on alternative radio. We got played in between, ummm...it would have made Michael so happy. I made me happy. It got played between The Black Keys and Papa Roach on Q104 in NY. How cool is that? There's another one in Cleveland that picked up on it a little bit. And I mean, you probably wouldn't be talking to me if you didn't like the song and there wasn't something there. It's crazy, though. There hasn't been one negative thing said. There was one blogger you could tell so wanted to go there, but couldn't really do it. That was another thing. Me and Michael talked about that. After that whole episode at the Brit Awards, with the Oasis guys. And he was really bummed out because they were the band of the moment in England and it was so unnecessary. I said "Listen. Here's the deal. We just make the record so good, that if anybody disses it, they look like idiots." So, what are you going to say? You don't have to like it but you can't say it's a shitty record. It's undeniably good enough to not diss (laughs)!
You have said that through this journey, you have come to a better understanding of what happened to Michael and why? In what ways do you feel you better understand him and what do you see as his lasting impact and legacy?
The first thing is the time. The passage of time and having that perspective of time going by, where you don't see things in the moment and even ten years later, and even in my own life. And if you look at it like any, and I don't care if it's Elvis or Frank Sinatra or whoever it may be, there's no artist that has been successful in the entertainment industry that has never gone through, as was coined by Julien Temple, "the wilderness years", right? He did a movie called 'The Future Is Unwritten' about Joe Strummer. I was lucky enough that Joe coming out of his wilderness years was with Black Grape because Joe was hanging out with us and was 10 years ahead of Michael. And it doesn't hit everyone as hard, but even Frank Sinatra and Elvis had comebacks. Elvis had to come back. Now he's Elvis, but in the time, trust me, there was probably a window there where it wasn't that fun to be Elvis. Michael was at the end of the beginning of that portion of the story if we're looking at the sort of arc of his life. Then on top of it, he's in this tabloid frenzy because of the relationship he's in. It was just like a stew of toxicity. He was under a lot of pressure and stress and then he had that injury on his head, which caused him to lose his sense of smell and taste. That would be like Picasso not being able to see. Michael enjoyed tasting and smelling things more than most. So, to have that taken away, and then nobody knew. It's not like now, where being a victim of something is the most heroic thing you can do. In those days, you kept your mouth shut and walked it off. It wasn't the culture then to glorify all of the stuff you were going through. He wasn't wired that way either. So, he was holding a lot of stuff in.
And that's the thing, you know. It's just the time going by and then seeing the parallels to the world we live in now to then. There are so many people who if you time transported them from 1995 to 2024, and they saw themselves and the positions they were taking, they would be horrified at that person. Especially when it comes to issues of freedom of speech and things like that. And Michael was, like, a real champion of the underdog, because I think he always saw himself as the underdog, to a certain degree. It's just the things you can look at that he didn't get through, where he was at then, and then applying them to today and having a context. That's kind of what I meant. Hopefully, if we get to expand on this...and I don't want to re-release The Last Rockstar...but there is a potential opportunity to do something new. And it may not be a documentary. Maybe it's a narrative-driven episodic thing, or whatever it may be. But to use some of the stories, not just in Michael's life, but from that era, to kind of hold up a mirror to where we are now. And maybe it will remind people of how we got here. Because let's be honest, the world's a mess right now and I think music is like the canary in the coal mine. Everything that's happened to the music business, I've already lived it. Whether it's recordings being de-monetized or whatever it may be. The bottom already dropped out. A lot of things are heading for that same brick wall. Now that the dust is starting to settle and music again is starting...like the whole idea of doing vinyl. It's pretty cool that there's even a demand for it. I think music is starting to come back into the world because it's lost its place. It doesn't have the significance it used to hold. It doesn't mean what it used to mean and there are a million reasons why. But it all starts with people's values and what's held up as what matters and what doesn't matter and what's important and what's success. It's all shifted.