Few artists can boast of the career that Jeff Scott Soto has. More than 35 years into his career he is still putting out incredible records with multiple bands. On November 6 he will release his latest solo record, Wide Awake (In My Dreamland), which could be his best yet. He recently took some time to walk through the record and talk about the Lakers, Eddie Van Halen, and much more.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with Jeff Scott Soto –
On the effect Covid-19 had on the release of the record – I believe the original intent was a July release or maybe early fall, maybe August. So I believe we definitely moved it based on the hopes that this whole thing would be over, and we could kind of be resuming our normal lives again. But obviously, when we delayed the release and we saw nothing was really gonna be changing any time soon, we obviously had to get it out there. We can’t sit on it for an entire year. But on the other hand, now we have to deal with the new way of promoting a record. It seems like every year there’s a new way of promoting and a new way of doing things because the old ways just keep going by the wayside. The social media thing was one thing to get used to and then the loss of a lot of physical sales and, even new cars don’t even have CD players anymore because people just don’t want to buy product. Maybe they just see it as a form of hoarding. Maybe they’re just not interested in the liner notes or they don’t care about the photos. But that’s what it’s become. And it’s a drag for traditionalists like us. We love that kind of stuff. We lived for the liner notes and even the smell of the new album or CD when you open the package. So, bottom line is, I think, overall, it didn’t really affect it too much. It’s just obviously finding new parameters and kind of new ways of promoting it around the fact that we’re stuck at home. 1:27
On working with Alessandro DelVecchio on the record – This is the first (record we did) together. I’ve known Alessandro for 15 years now. I met him on tour when I was with the JSS band doing a European tour and we had a day off going into Milan and Marcelle Jacob from Talisman was producing Alessandro’s band, a band called Edge of Forever. Knowing I had a day off, he asked me, “Would you mind coming into the studio and dropping a few backing vocals?” I’m like, “Oh, God, my day off, the last thing I want to do is sing”. But I would do anything for my brother, and I’m glad I did it because this is where I first met Alessandro and began a very strong and lengthy friendship with him. This being said, I’ve watched in the past years, the past, I’m gonna say, 5 – 6 years, he truly has grown tremendously in terms of a producer, writer, a singer, everything, even an engineer. He’s doing all the work in the studio, he’s just a jack of all trades. And so when Frontiers brought the idea of us working together finally, after knowing him for so long and always talking about, we gotta work together. It was a no brainer. I wanted to bring him on board. 3:19
“Love’s Blind”
On whether he had a sound in mind when making the record – I didn’t, he (Alessandro) did. He told me this later, and it’s even part of the EPK, where he said, in making this record, because he wrote all the music, every single song, he composed all the music and even played on all the instruments on the original demos for me. So his idea was to take the best of what he loved about my voice and my career and kind of mold that into a contemporary melodic rock/hard rock album. And so if he told me that would have been in his approach before we started working together, I might have thought, “I’m not really interested in repeating or plagiarizing. Let’s think of something else. So let’s try to think of something more original than that ideal”, by him not saying it and me just loving every track, he just kept sending new tracks. And so I’m like, “Oh, my God, this is great. I can envision this one would be great”. It led me, it just naturally went that way. And it wasn’t till later I realized his process. And then when he admitted that’s what his process was going to be, it made sense. It all just kind of came full circle. And I’m glad I just let him roll with it. 5:00
“Without You”
On the layered vocal sound on the track “Without You” – Well, it’s no surprise. Anybody who’s even heard me in interviews for a year, much less the past 35, knows how important a band like Queen, the influence that they have with me and pretty much everything I listened to and love growing up. I’m a champion of things that have a lot of vocals and a lot of backing vocals and structure when it comes to layers and layers of singing. I’ve tried to strip it down a little more. For all intents and purposes that ideal can lead to sounding dated. I don’t think it’s dated in terms of the idea behind it, of just making things very choral and choir-esk, I love that. I don’t think that’s the dated part more so than the actual, just because if it’s behind classic rock, people are just gonna label it. Well, that sounds like, you know, it sounds like it’s back in the day, but I still love that world. I still try to incorporate that world and a song like Without You, which was very clean oriented in terms of what he wrote it. As I said earlier, I was trying to dig into the things he loved about my career in my voice, but one of the other things he wanted to happen to is one of my biggest influences, that queen. So in giving me that song, he knew I was gonna turn that into my own kind of epic majestic queen moment, so to speak. 6:33
On getting back into melodic rock after SOTO and Sons of Apollo – Well, to be honest with you, Retribution was more along the lines of this album. It was less keyboard-oriented, more guitar. So I would say it’s more hard rock, certainly heavier than, say, Sons of Apollo or SOTO, of course. Most of my records I do with or for Frontiers they do lean towards that more melodic rock thing, even WET. I’ve never really went away from that sound. I just kind of wanted to expand on it. This is one of the greatest things about the freedom of expression of music is you don’t have to always abide by what’s expected of you. It’s more real. It’s more genuine if you show people all the different colors and all the different influences you have in you and I’m one of those fortunate artists to have those outlets to be able to tap into those different arenas. Because otherwise, I probably would just be bored having to do the same kind of genre, the same kind of, I don’t wanna say, formula. But every album, every artist, every band that I’m doing and releasing is kind of formulaic in terms of what that artist stands for and what kind of music we represent. So, yeah, it’s my solo record, gives me a chance to come back to that world. And then when I want to do the heavier stuff, I jump into SOTO and even Sons of Apollo, which is it’s classic mixed in with a very heavy vibe behind it. So I love wearing the different hats. I love having the outlets to be able to wear those different shoes. 9:17
“I’ll Be Waiting”
On the theme of the record in the tracks “Living In a Dream” and “Wide Awake” – We were experiencing, as in pretty much throughout history, we were experiencing worldwide the divisions, the political separations, the social challenges, even the gender war, so to speak, and trying to find that equality This has been going on for so many years, even before this historic year, that we’ve experienced it so much in the U. S. So it was really leaning, especially the lyrics and the title is leaning more towards that, what we’ve seen in the past few years, more so than what we’ve seen in the past few decades or centuries. But I would have never imagined (the title) would have taken even a bigger and broader coincidence that it has. But you know what? Being wide awake in a dreamland, it’s what we’re experiencing now is certainly like a big dream, like a big nightmare but we’re wide awake and experiencing it, it’s real. It’s a real thing and not going away anytime soon. And so album absolutely reflected at the time already what we were going through before Pandemic hit, and now we have taken on a whole new meaning, I might have altered some of the lyrics to kind of fit this moment, but I guess that’s gonna be reflective on the other stuff that I’m writing for the future. 13:00
On the closing track “Desperate” – I gotta be honest. To me, that song represents more of my very beginning with Yngwie Malmsteen. That song’s like the second cousin to something like “I am a Viking” without all the shred and the guitar work that “I am a Viking” consists of. It just has that kind of vibe, that kind of feel. And this is one of the reasons I wanted it to close the record because this is, it’s celebrating another milestone in my life and my career. This song kind of represents the beginning of my career. It’s weird closing the album with a song that represents more of the beginning of my life and that was again by design. I want that song to basically come at the end because it sounds like something that started me in the very beginning. 14:49
“And The Cradle Will Rock”
On the loss of Eddie Van Halen – I can’t even put into words what Eddie meant to me as much as what he meant to the world. My peers my colleagues, fans of mine. In general, he left more than just a game-changing legacy to all of us. And it’s weird because when someone like that, when somebody that important to us personally, whether it’s somebody that everybody knows or agrees with or feels for, when somebody like that that that’s so personal to you passes there are a lot of people that don’t understand why, for instance, why I could be so affected by it? I don’t know. I didn’t have a personal relationship or working relationship. So why am I so affected? That music and everything that Eddie gave us in terms of influencing in Van Halen and then some is a part of us When that person passes, a part of us passes, a part of us dies, too. Even though we have these, we have these childhood memories, we have these things to draw from these experiences and influences. We lose a little something when we lose that person. And that’s what Eddie meant to me and means to so many people. We all felt that loss like we lost a little bit of ourselves. 16:09
On the Lakers winning the NBA Championship -It’s more than bringing it home after 10 years. The last time we won the Finals was 10 years ago. And for me, it represented bringing it home for Kobe more so than bringing home the championship after all these years. I would have loved to see Kobe go out that way to be able to retire after a win like that, as opposed to having finally pulled the plug on his career because he realized the bones and the body wasn’t capable of keeping up with the pace that he delivers. And so for me, it was more important and meant more that they brought it home for Kobe. More so than just the city and because of these times and everything that we’re all dealing with it, we need a little shot of inspiration, etcetera. Yeah, the whole Kobe thing, absolutely is the reason why it means that much more to me. 17:40
On the upcoming TSO livestream – That was a big one. It was tough holding on that in because I knew they were working on something like this and obviously, we’re sworn to secrecy., It’s not our place to discuss anything TSO until they give us the go-ahead. But the fact that we’re not gonna have to go dark this year. We’re giving some kind of capacity to TSO that’s very much needed. I’m so happy that they were able to pull that off. 19:48
