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The Hashman Speaks with Roine Stolt of the Flower Kings - Roine Stolt
Roine Stolt has become a major iconic figure in the music world, having helped lead The Flower Kings through several albums in the contemporary music world, a band that has become one of the largest forerunners in progressive rock today. After spending lots of time with several side projects such as Transatlantic, Kaipa, and the Tangent (for which he bid the latter two goodbye this year) as well as appearing with his pal Neal Morse on his solo albums, Stolt has released a solo album, which is something much different from anything else he has worked on, even his first solo album simply titled The Flower King released years ago.
But his latest disc Wall Street Voodoo is a collection of more stripped down songs, of course there are the high elements of his technical grandeur, but he really wanted to rock out on this one, bringing a more blues rock approach that showcases something more along the lines of a both a guitarist's and a songwriter's record.
Wall Street Voodoo is actually a record that had been in the works for some time now, at least idea wise, as a way for Stolt to musically express the way music has influenced him ever since he became a musician, "I think this was probably something that I have been meaning to do for a couple of years now," begins Stolt, "But given the hectic schedule with the Flower Kings and all the other albums I have done with Transatlantic, The Tangent, and Kaipa and playing on some other peoples solo albums, I couldn't find time. But since then I have backed out of Tangent and I said goodbye to Kaipa, trying to concentrate on Flower Kings more and more. "
"One of the reasons for wanting to finally create this project is that this is my 30-year anniversary in the recording business. I recorded my first album with Kaipa in '75, so I was thinking that I should do something special for the occasion. I had lots and lots of music lying around and some of it was more like progressive or symphonic rock and some of it was nicely written tunes for acoustic guitar and some was rock or blues; but I wanted to do more like a pure blues album for some time. Because this (type of music) is where I came from. "
"I started to play the guitar in the sixties, I listened to that type of music; I was a big fan of Hendrix, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, and the Allman Brothers Band, for which I was really into the band that had the good guitar players, so if a band had a good guitar player, I was interested in the band. So this is sort of where I came from and is one of the reasons I play music and started playing with bands; where it began with my love for the guitar and the blues guitar."
But is this the definitive Roine Stolt record, a record that defines him as a musician, the record that he has always wanted to make as a statement. Well interesting enough, Stolt himself says that Wall Street Voodoo is simply just a Roine Stolt record, "I don't ever think I will make that record," explains Stolt, "in fact when I am finished making a record, I start thinking about something completely different. "
"So I am sort of leaving the music when I am finished the mixing and the mastering and I just leave it up to other people to sell it. It's like another one of those records and it really doesn't matter if it's Unfold the Future or Space Revolver or Wall Street Voodoo; it's just another record and this one just happens to be a little different. It is quite interesting to do something that is not exactly what you do because every time I get asked to play on someone else's record, it's mostly on progressive rock albums. "
"Transatlantic, Tangent, and Kaipa are kind of similar to what the Flower King's do, so this gave me a chance to play something that is different and I didn't need to take into consideration that this is progressive rock or something, and even something that progressive rock bands expect to hear. It was fun making the album."
Stolt really emphasizes how music had made him able to communicate with those who listen to his music, and begins to speak on how many other musicians used different ways of this melodic communication to experiment with music and how many artists have been able to make their own mark by doing so,
"Being able to say what you want to say is a privilege for anyone who writes music, gets it released and people buy it, this is a chance you have to speak to someone else and say something to see if other people agree on what you are saying, or if they think you are a nut or whatever," laughs Stolt, "It's also talking about the late 60's and the time I started to listen to this music. Rock started to develop into something else (besides just being music), you had bands that used a brass section, you had bands that took in Indian influences, you had people like Carlos Santana bringing Latin music into rock. "
"At that point, rock music suddenly went into different directions and that was an interesting time. There were also lots of bands and artists that were more interested in developing the lyrical side, mainly people like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and those type of people. I think at the time of the Vietnam war and everything, it was OK to write about something else, and even the Beatles opened up of course, with writing songs about the relation between man and woman, it wasn't just love songs, it was songs about anything and some of them were very political. This is probably a tradition that I picked up when writing for this album."
The album itself was originally going to be a record that would sound like the late 60's British blues, similar to Cream and John Mayall, but two CDs worth of material later, it came to be something else, something more, something that Stolt put his mark on. But as he later explains, he wanted to have other musicians play and sing on the record to as well, to again, make Wall Street Voodoo turn out as a more elaborate record than planned.
"When recording this album, I didn't have a big plan. I knew that I wanted to make a blues album," elaborates Stolt, "I started out trying to make a blues album, then It ended up turning into more psychedelic blues album and in the end it turned out to be more like a just a music album, because there were lots and lots of other musical influences coming in; I think that is a part of being myself, Roine, being a guy that loves so many types of music so even if I try to make a blues album, I can't help but incorporate some psych, pop, rock, funk, or even jazz and this is what this album became, but I mean there was really no plan. Even the players on the album just came about as a coincidence."
"Neal (Morse) asked me after I came home from an American tour if I wanted to play some guitar on his album and when got down to the economics about it, he wanted to pay me and I said you can just sing on my next record, because I am looking for someone to sing a couple of songs and I really haven't found anyone who could sing on it. I was looking for someone else beside myself, because, I think it could have been boring if it was myself on the entire album. Neal said that he would love to do that and I also asked him if he could also play some Hammond organ, so again, it wasn't really planned, it just happened that we were working on new albums, both Neal and myself at the same time."
Like many records, Wall Street Voodoo was recorded in various recording studios and in the musician's homes often miles away from each other, where everybody sends their tracks to everybody and Stolt would take them and mix them into the music's final form. But as Stolt begins to hint upon the future endeavors of The Flower Kings, he talks about his personal interest in producing records.
"That's pretty much the way records are done these days," says Stolt, "but I kind of miss the days when people were actually spending time in the studio together, and that's what we are doing as the Flower Kings. We are going down to Denmark and record together, with all the guys in the studio. For my album, there was really no budget for spending time in the studio somewhere. It's more like you do the basic tracks and then have someone add the bass, piano, etc. etc. I think the bad thing (about recording separately) is that you can't spend time together to get immediate feedback; but the good thing is that everybody can record at the same time in others studios. So if you want to make an album and make it quick, maybe it's a good thing. We can manage to make it sound unique and not we are all playing along with a click track, it's more like it's a band playing together, and that is the most important part when you actually get the record in your hand and put to in your player and it sound like music."
"I'm not really a fan of music that's perfectly produced and what you hear actually sounds like a drum machine playing; I'd rather hear some sloppiness into, which contributes to the live feeling of it. I don't believe in 100 percent perfection in it, I believe in something like eighty-five percent perfection."
The Flower Kings will be entering Medley Studios soon, and plan on going all the tracks together, working at the same time, and even if they decode to go analog with the record, more than likely, new technology will be the medium after the initial tracking is done, "in the end we will probably end up with computer files anyways," explains Stolt, "because we end up using computers for the overdubs, so it gets much more complicated if we decide to work with just "reel" tape. These days it's too expensive to use reels as a means of overdubbing. It's more important to have the basic tracks down and a really good drum sound and hopefully some piano, bass, and some "rough" guitars that we may keep in the end. And if we are lucky we will get some vocals done too. I am quite exited about the prospects of the next album."
So what can we expect from the next Flower Kings album, well, we are just going to have to wait until we get a copy, because even at this point, Stolt and the rest of the band are planning on letting the songs and the music that has been written sink into this recording and maybe there might be a concept to it, and maybe not.
"I don't know," says Stolt, "it's as if we are just taking the songs that we like the most and see what it looks like. We have written some of the lyrics and I can't say that they in a certain direction. I did have an idea for a concept at one point, but now it's kind of going in a different direction; but it's no big deal, because at this point, that is not really important, because you can almost restrict yourself by saying that this is going to be the concept and whatever doesn't fit within the concept is not good. I think the people who listen to the record are not concerned about the concept, they are concerned about if they like songs, the melodies, the sound, the performing, and the feeling in the music. So if by chance it ends up being a concept album, well you know, I don't think the Flower Kings did a concept album. We have gone sort of half way, like Adam and Eve as well as Flower Power which are almost conceptual, but not really. The main thing that concerns me is good songwriting, good music, and the good feeling we get when we play in the studio and we will see what happens."
Even after his departure from The Tangent and Kaipa, Stolt remains a busy musician, concentrating on many other projects with Flower King members. "As I see it now Thomas (Bodin) and I are doing an acoustic album together, kind of a scaled down project and we hope to get some more time to do it. At this point we are halfway though it and we hope to get it done by springtime next year; but I don't know if it's going to be an Inside Out release of if it's going to be someone release, or even release it through the website; no decision have been made yet.
Of course there is this Flower Kings Offspring group called circus brimstone and we did a tour back in April and we recorded some of the shows live, so we ended up doing a live album that we released through the website and mail-order companies. We are planning to do a Circus Brimstone album, but the band is more like the experimental instrumental side of Flower Kings, so I am guessing it will be some sort of weird mix between King Crimson and Weather Report.
We are trying to use African Rhythms and improvised and simple riffs as well as being a bit heavier than the Flower Kings. We haven't decided on the recording day. Even Jonas (Reingold) and I have worked on other projects together and it is also experimental fusion. These types of projects are not really big scale projects, but these are projects that we like to do just for the fun of doing them, so we are not expecting any big record sales from that. I guess it's the privilege we have in doing all this stuff we can hopefully sell some of it, do a couple of gig, and have fun with it. It's what make you remember why you started playing music and that is important."
Besides recording, Stolt wants to go out and perform some more gigs with The Flower Kings and emphasizes that he want to play many places that the band has never played before "We are planning to do a festival in Mexico in March," elaborates Stolt, "we are planning to do a bigger tour of America following that date, but now it seems like the new album will be out the first week in April in America, so it seems almost pointless to go back to America sooner if we don't have the new album out, so the plan now is to do the Baja Prog and do a couple of gigs on the West Coast, Chicago, and maybe Canada and then go home and plan for a bigger tour of America and play places that we haven't played before, because mainly we have been playing on the east coast in a limited area. America is a big country and maybe the prog scene is not the best all over America, but still we want to try it once at least and see if we can pick up any new fans, so that is the prospect for next year."
With prospects for the future Flower Kings release as well as Wall Street Voodoo hitting the racks, Roine Stolt continues to make music that enlightens fans of technical music whether it is with prog fans or the metal heads. So all of us wait in anticipation for the next King's record while we listen to his latest solo release and many other musical endeavors to come from one of the Kings of progressive rock.
On the last note Stolt explains how he feels about mainstream music, the music business, and how many bands that have been able to make a dent in the mainstream are giving people a chance to hear what a lot of music that they wouldn't otherwise hear is all about. "(As far as popular music) it's more like the business has taken over," concludes Stolt, "you have to make the next hit and be on the charts so you can make the same money you have over the past five years, otherwise you have to sell a couple of your houses and scale down and have no fun because they have gotten use to spending lots of money as a certain standard of living, and your main goal is to keep going, and you just write a couple of hits so you forget about the music, which is sad."
"There are a couple bands that are coming out that kind of have the progressive sound in their music, the Mars Volta, System of a Down, Radiohead, those are groups that sound different, almost being progressive, but not really. Maybe once the average fan gets used to rhythms and riffs and melodies, then maybe there is a chance to give progressive rock a wider audience, so it's not all "pop music." At least that's what I am hoping. There are also a lot of metal bands that are doing interesting things as well, the way that they are playing and the way that they are writing and so on."
We definitely can't argue with those last comments.
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Written by Hashman - 12/6/2005 |
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