Kevin Martin Interview |
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Love Stories & Other Musings is the fifth studio release from Candlebox and also the second since the band reformed a few years back. The recording lineup includes Kevin Martin (vocals), Scott Mercado (drums), Peter Klett (guitar), Sean Hennesy (guitar) and Adam Kurry (bass). The disc includes nine brand new cuts and five bonus songs that feature updated versions of some of the band’s biggest hits.
I was impressed by Kevin’s candor about the band and even though it was a great interview I had some technical problems, so I transcribed the conversation here… |
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How are you doing today? Excellent. You know I always felt that Candlebox was the model band that personified “persistence.” You were persistent getting your debut out in ’93, and even when you guys kinda broke up in 2000, you’re persistent now, regaining that ground now, even when you guys weren’t producing music. With this new album “Love Stories and Other Musings,” how has the creative process changed for you since the early days? We used to have pre-production for a record for 2 weeks and then go in the studio for 6 weeks. So now its all about, um really putting ourselves under a pressure that makes us… we’re better musicians under pressure I should say. I think we prefer not working so hard on the songs outside of when they’re actually going to be reordered for the record. So we can keep them fresh and we tend to play them if we’ve got 2 or 3 songs before going into the studio, we happen to be on tour, we’ll try them out live. We used to not do that to much. Cool. You have about 5 re-recordings on the album to fill things out. Now I read the reason for this is you had done some songs for a video game, and then you decided to add some more. Was there any thought to a different arrangement on when you revisited these songs? And I’ve said before, they are very, very challenging. I don’t think we expected it to be as difficult as it was. I think we were gonna pop in there one day a record it all 12 songs, which is ridiculous and there’s a lot more put into those tracks than we remembered. And it took us quite some time. I remember the vocals for “Far Behind” took 3 hours to finish. Wow. Let me talk about the new album, I love the song “Sweet Summertime.” It’s great that you’ve gone in a melodic direction with that song it’s not all about the hard rock riff. Not to say that you can’t do hard rock riffs like you used to, “Lifelike Song” is an awesome riff song. But tell me about “Sweet Summertime.” And the music… I’m really an amateur guitar player. I really liked the combination of chords, the E to the D to A, and then I like the C# movement to a chorus. I just started playing it (the song). I took it to the guys and they said “cool” and we sat on it for a couple of months. And then it was studio time and Kenny Anders says “I really love this song, I wanna make it sound like a Tom Petty song.” It’s all about the melody and the story, let’s not overdo it. And it came out really good. Awesome, I want to wrap up things up — what’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you at a performance? Ha Ha! You’re really suffering for your art with that one. I love the variety on this album. Not only do you go through the classic album cuts you re-record, your original sound so to speak, but you have a variety of really good hard rock, riff rock, and melodic rock. Which one of the reasons I’m talking to you… that’s what I cover. Really good melodic rock. And I think you hit the nail on the head here. Fans will give you the second look now. I read you’ve got a follow up to this album in the works? Awesome thank you Kevin Martin of Candlebox – I really appreciate this interview. Take care.
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