If Geoff Tate never recorded another record his legendary status would still be cemented. His work with Queensryche lifted him to the top echelon of vocalists in the history of rock. When we spoke in 2019 we talked about his remarkable career with Queensryche. Never content to rest on past laurels, Tate is about to release his second record under the Sweet Oblivion moniker entitled Relentless. I recently spent some time with Geoff talking about this record and post-pandemic touring.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws.com Conversation with Geoff Tate –
On if he was hesitant to work with an entirely new lineup of Sweet Oblivion – No, not at all. No, I was happy to do it. I like working with different people and different groups of people, and I look forward to collaborations with various people. Since I left Queensryche years ago, I had decided that after working with the same group of people for 30 plus years, I really wanted to branch out and try new things with different people. And so I’ve been kind of on a quest to do that in the last eight or so years. I met Aldo (Lonobile) a couple of years ago, and we had begun talking about perhaps doing a project together, and it finally happened. I’m very happy that we were able to meet, a meeting of the minds, so to speak, and make it all work. 1:11
On being more involved in the creative process than on the first record – (I was) probably a little bit more involved with that. I think I wrote three songs myself, and then I collaborated with Aldo on the lyrics for another track. But, no, It was a kind of a similar thing where we were working in different studios in different parts of the world and then file-sharing back and forth until we had what we felt was a strong song, and then back and forth on the mixing the track as well. So it’s kind of like the 21st-century studio is a virtual thing, where you can work at any location. It doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to be in the same physical room anymore. So it works really good. 2:21
“Strong Pressure”
On the heavier direction of Relentless – I was sitting in this beautiful little cottage in Ireland with this magnificent view over the valley and onto the ocean beyond and sitting in this room full of windows all day working on this record. It was quite inspiring, actually. Aldo’s a fantastic guitar player, he’s so easy to work with. We both sort of, I think probably moved more towards the middle of meeting with each other because I tend to be kind of more extreme in one direction than a lot of people I know musically, musically speaking, I guess I’m kind of more extreme. He is more of the kind of person that brings me back to the center place. I’ll give him a song with no guitar at all, and he’ll go, “What am I supposed to do?” “I don’t know, play something different, does every song. I have to have a guitar on it?” But he would come up with something that works really well. That’s always the amazing thing to me about collaboration when you give somebody a challenge like handing them a piece of music or the idea and saying, “Can you do something with this”, and then seeing what they come back at you with. It’s always amazing to me because it’s most often times, 99.99%. the time it’s something that you wouldn’t have thought of, and I enjoy that. Other people are really uncomfortable with that because they wanna know exactly what’s going on at all times and being in their minds in control. I don’t want to be in control. I wanna be surprised and inspired. 4:15
“Another Change”
On if his process changes with one guitar and keyboard rather than 2 guitars – No. Because the way I normally work is if I’m writing the song, I don’t have guitar at all in my song. I leave it up to whoever I’m working with to write the guitar parts and that kind of thing. Although I have dabbled in guitar solos played on keyboard, I’ve done quite a bit of that but the actual metal-style guitar I kind of try to veer away from as much as possible. 7:19
On the track “Aria”, which he sings in Italian – I wanted to do something in Italian. I love Italy. I go there quite a bit. Two of my guitar players that I play with regularly are Italian, who also played on this album Walter Cianciusi and Dario Parente. I have this company called Backstage Pass Travel, we take people to Italy and not just Italy, but all over the world to different places. But Italy is one of the main places we go. The people in the culture just absolutely captured my heart, and I wanted to do something in Italian. So I told Aldo, I said, “Please, let’s try to do a song in Italian”. He was thinking, “Oh, my God. What? Really?” Poor guy, I was always challenging him. So he came back with this song and he wrote it, and it’s quite beautiful. The lyrics are easily translated in Google, and I’d highly suggest you do that if you don’t speak Italian. What I was concerned about was is it understandable to Italians? So I played it for a number of my Italian friends who speak fluent Italian, and they all said, “Oh, yeah, you got it. I can understand everything. In fact, your diction is really, really nice on this”. So I was happy that it passed the judgment of the board of directors. 8:12
“True Colors”
On if there is a freedom to doing just a studio project as opposed to a live band – I suppose there is. I’ve never really thought of it in those terms. I look forward to playing my music, whatever it is, live. I like playing live a lot. I love traveling, and I love playing in front of a live audience. It’s kind of what I’ve always done and always sort of geared myself towards. Although the challenges of the pandemic have been that, of course, we’re locked down in our own little world for what seems like forever. How we deal with that is really interesting. Some people get really creative, and they come up with unique and different things in whatever their interest is, other people go absolutely crazy. I guess it just depends on how you’re wired. For me, it’s been a very creative time, and then I’ve got a lot of material written and a lot of plans for different releases. I’m looking forward to when the world opens up again. But if it doesn’t, I’m pretty happy sitting in my studio five days a week writing music. I tell you, I really absolutely love it. 10:42
On upcoming tour plans – (Touring is) looking better and better days go by. Confidence is getting higher and higher. We have a date in the Seattle area and the 28th of May and looking forward to that. I think there are two dates in Northwest and then we head off to the U. K., which is opening up really nicely. I did do a couple of shows in Florida over the last couple of months that turned out really to be very successful and then a couple of New Hampshire. Both venues went to great lengths to ensure that there was social distancing in place and one venue actually replaced their ventilation system with a real high-tech new modern thing. The cost them like half a million dollars, it is pretty impressive. But taking it seriously as far as trying to make a safe environment for people to go to again. I think as more people are vaccinated and more of the world opens up, we’ll see a return to some sort of normal. It might not be the normal that we knew, but it’ll be a new normal and I think all of us are looking forward to that…We’re booked to do the 30 year anniversary of the Empire album tour. The promoters all want it still. We’re gonna continue on like we never quit… It’s a fun show, isn’t it? I really enjoy it myself. I’m always a little bit dismayed when it’s over. Let’s just keep going. 12:35
“Hide Away”
On how he will release the new material he’s working on – Well, that’s kinda at the point I’m getting to now, deciding what the material is going to be used for. So much of our world is changing pretty rapidly and the record industry, if you wanna call it that is something that’s radically different now than it was 10, 15 years ago. So, the concept of the album is something that’s kind of going by the wayside in a lot of ways. People are looking at different ways of releasing digital material now. I’m sort of in the research mode of kind of figuring out what I’m going to do with all the music I have now. I have a lot of stuff, a lot of songs, a lot of unfinished stuff, a lot of finish stuff. So I have to figure out how to how to group it or sell it, I guess. There’s a lot of kinds of interesting technology that’s happening now with Bitcoin and selling digital bits of information and how the world is evolving into that. We’re questioning, it’s a real big questioning time. I think, culturally society not just in America, but all over the world, we’re questioning what’s real anymore. You start to think about it. A diamond is only worth something because we say it is. value. We assign a value to a piece of gold or cash. US cash is not even back by a gold standard. It’s just basically words on the paper that say this is what it’s worth and that work keeps fluctuating every day. We see it all the time in the stock market. So what makes a diamond more valuable than a piece of digital information?… I’m fascinated by that concept of the NFT (Non-Fungible Token). I’m fascinated by that. I think that’s really could be the way that things go, the way the world is working now. It’s definitely an interesting idea to look into more and see how that would play out. I think Kings of Leon announced they’re releasing an (NFT) album, that’s really interesting. I think a lot of people are gonna be watching that closely. 16:14
