RR: How did you get Chris Robinson to produce your debut album?
SK: We had a connection to Pete Angelus, who managed The Black Crowes since the time they were Mr. Crowes Garden. He heard of what we were doing and requested a showcase. We were thrilled obviously, one of the biggest gigs ever really, and he loved it.
Pete agreed to manage us. He felt that Chris would dig it, and invited him to come see us play. And he dug it indeed. He had just recently started his own imprint label, Silver Arrow Records, and was looking for a band to produce. It was a truly perfect scenario.
RR: Let’s discuss the songwriting process for the album.
SK: This album is mostly songs that we brought to the table, if not all the way written, mostly written, and needed some help with arranging, or needed a bridge. For this album, there were some songs that we had up our sleeves for a little while. They were all written during the time that we moved to Los Angeles, so within the last three or four years.
Recently, we’ve had a lot of songs where we started soundchecking an idea. We do have great moments where a song is completely written as a band, three or four of them. Those aren’t on the album, but we definitely foresee them on the next record, and we do play them in the live show. We have four guys that have spent the better half of our lives writing songs. From my individual experiences, if it weren’t for the love of a song, I don’t think I would have gotten where I am today with music. I don’t think I would have ever really found beauty in a guitar, beauty in making music with other people, if I didn’t understand the power of a song. Since I can remember, from the 8th grade, (laughs) I remember writing a song about the Vietnam War after seeing Platoon, and from there, the songwriting process has grown, and my ability to communicate musically with people, and understanding the subtle nuances of playing music with people has all proliferated itself along with my love of writing songs.
I really feel that everyone, in that way, I can speak for all the songwriters in the band. Timmy [Jones] has some songs on this record that we share parts with like “Old Piano,” for instance. He was writing it at his house and Katy Perry, the famous Katy Perry was at his house at the time, and he was writing “Old Piano,” and it goes “she’s been playin’ me like an old piano, all the notes out of key,” and he didn’t know what was going to be the next line, and Katy Perry walked through and said, “somehow singing the right words over the right melody.” It’s little things like that that are undeniable that’s where the song would go, and that’s where we give people credit for that. Timmy has also been the most open to co-write with people.
For me, “Pure Mountain Angel,” for instance, Walker [Young] who started writing it the first year we were in Los Angeles, had this really beautiful, strong, and the message was so huge, and we felt like we could have the horizon climax, and he wanted a bridge for it. I started listening to it, and I remembered a song I had written many years back. My wife now, but my girlfriend at the time, was about to break up with me, and my previous band, Scrappy Hamilton was going to shit, and I wrote the song from my heart. That was the bridge of the song that I had written, and I said, “Hey, Walker, let’s do this bridge for that,” and it turned out to be a perfect compliment to each other.
We’re really open to having people change our songs. We are also very open to having a coach or producer come in, and really have an idea for what he heard. I think that really has a lot to do with nailing in the power of a song. Chris Robinson had a lot of great ideas. He shortened “Old Piano,” for instance, by two minutes to make it radio friendly, and what he did was perfect. He took out a superfluous little measure in “See Her” to make the entrance to the song pop right out of the page, or out of the speakers, sonically.
I think all of that stuff is really pretty crucial to the band, and where we are at now. I think this goes back to “alone, we’re good; together, we’re great.” I can write something, and I like it, and I can sing it all day long and it’ll be cool, but what I hear I’ll never be able to reproduce by myself. What I hear might be, maybe even our ear, could then be what really needs to be digested by a lot of people—“why don’t you rein in this really artistic moment of your song and make it more simple and more pop-y, to really, honestly, make a hit out of it.”
I don’t want to sound like we are trying to carve out hits all the time, but I think that throughout all this time, I used to write songs that never even had a repeating chorus. It would have a repeating melody, but not the same words. Bit by bit, you hone in to write the best songs, and I think, luckily, we all met at a time when we were all on the same page with that, professionally speaking, and, also, open-hearted to collaboration to a different level that we’ve ever been on.
RR: Different levels make me think of different live ideas. How does the band determine their setlists for each gig?
SK: Well, we play all the songs on the record. That’s what we have, and that’s what we’ll always do for the next little while until the next record comes out. When we were touring with the Crowes or touring with the Avett Brothers, or any supporting capacity, most of the time our set is 45 minutes. We pretty much played the record, and I will sometimes opt to play something else in exchange for a more moodier song. I’ll take out “Rise Up,” for example, and throw in a minor song that I have. But for this whole tour, pretty much 60 minutes or 90 minutes is the slot time, and we have to bring all sorts of songs to the table and the set changes all the time. When we were with the Crowes, we had a nice formulaic approach to a set. I think a lot of us do like the experimentation and the looseness of having different songs run into each other. We also want to be able to cater to the people that want to record our shows, to have recordings of our shows, and entice them to come see us, so we like to switch it up, we want to rock out and experiment with how the set runs. We’re always trying to figure out what is the best lineup of songs.
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