Black Swan’s debut record Shake The World was a revelation. A collection of superstar talent that came together for a killer record. Now, Robin McAuley, Reb Beach, Jeff Pilson, and Matt Starr are back with Generation Mind and pick up right where they left off. Vocalist Robin McAuley makes a return visit to the site to talk about this new record.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with Robin McAuley –
On whether the process of creating the two records was similar – It was pretty much the same. No, it really was. Jeff (Pilson) is so busy, Reb (Beach) is so busy. Pre-pandemic, I finished a residency in Vegas at five nights a week, so I was crazy. So record number two came along, and Jeff dropped me an email and he goes, “Okay, so let’s start thinking about the second one, and as soon as I know my timeframe, I’ll shoot you an email again from wherever I am or I’ll call you and I can know how we’re gonna do it”, and then suddenly I get a call, “Reb’s in town and we’re gonna start shredding and see what happens, and that would just drop a load of songs on your doorstep and off you go”. It came in as one and I sat with it and I was in the middle of something, and then suddenly, bam, I have like six, seven, eight songs. Same kind of process, I’d work on lyrics and melodies and check back with Jeff, see when he was back home, and then plan a little slot and go work together and just bang it out as they say. :56
On if the band expected to do more than one record – When it was introduced to me as the “supergroup”, I went, “Nah, what a title”, I said, “No, I don’t want a supergroup. What is a supergroup?” But we got it done, and I think we always knew that if the chips fell in the right place, we would probably get a second record. You don’t think too much about it, you just get on with the writing and you hope that it’s gonna be a good record. Shake The World, we were really happy with. We had a great response to it. And of course, the pandemic kicks in right on the doorstep. So when we hit record number two, we were kind of laughing a little bit and going, “What are we gonna do now?” That was kind of it. Reb is just great with ideas. Jeff is great, I’ve just taken those ideas and making them work and really just got to it and started banging out these songs one after the other. There’d be riffs and arrangements and everything with little changes. I sat listening and I’m going, “Shit, now what am I gonna do?” Because it’s like it’s new and it’s fresh. I just finished my solo record kind of, sort of, and you kind of think, “Shit now I have to come up with an entirely new album full of lyrics, where am I going with this?” Not too dissimilar to Shake The World, Reb has this thing of when he’s writing licks, I hear things, I hear things and they’re almost like little words talking to me, and when I heard the opening riff on “Eagles Fly”, again, there was something in there and I’m going, “Oh my God, that reminds me so much of the alien voices that was in Jeff (Wayne)’s, War of the Worlds“, and I dug it up and there it is. Off I went on a tangent and I kind of wrote the whole lyrical concept thing of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds”, and the video kind of follows the almost abandoned house and the two kids have a little last hurrah before the aliens come. I love stories, it kind of makes it fun as long as it all ties in. 2:40
On if all the lyrical ideas for this record were written specifically for it – I believe for me, it definitely was all-new for Jeff, I believe it was, I don’t know if Reb brought anything from the past. I don’t think so. I think it was all pretty fresh and new, and if there was a riff or something that was discarded along the way, I know that how we work, they take it and they just twist it and they go, “That’s not the same riff”. If you play for Winger, you play for Whitesnake and you’re writing, that’s what you do. There’s always gonna be a trait of something, it’s like how Jeff writes, if I’m writing for Schenker, if I’m writing for something else, my voice is my voice, so I’m not going to sound like Doro. I said that in the most complimentary fashion. I’m just on a record with her, actually out of the UK, Circle of Friends. Actually, Joel Hoekstra is playing guitar and there are a plethora of people on there. So I mean that in the highest compliment. I’m going to sound like I do, but I’m going to take on a slightly different persona for the project that I’m in, and I told you last time, I just love this Black Swan band and it’s just awesome. It’s a great band. I think on the second record, we kind of sound like we’re a band, we moved from Shake The World and we managed to capture that, and we moved on to Generation Mind, and I think we locked it in on this one for sure. 6:07
On if there’s a comfort level going into a second record – I think we kind of go, “Yeah, that’s what you do, that’s what he does, and that’s what he does”. Reb made a really funny statement when we were shooting the two videos for “Generation Mind” and “Eagles Fly”, he goes, “Think we would be any good live?” Jeff said, “We’d probably suck”. Then he goes, “Do you think we’ll ever get to do it?” And I went, “Well, you guys to come off the road, and I come off the road and we go, Hey look, we have a weekend”. The problem with that is, and it’s not necessarily a problem, but a problem is you can’t just show up and play. There’s work, there’s rehearsal involved, and we’re not all in the same place at the same time, but we do agree collectively that ideally in the perfect world, Monsters of Rock or festivals would be the perfect platform, no pun intended, for us to perform because you’ll hopefully get a lot of people in the same place at the same time on the same day, a weekend, and it would be a great way to launch the band. We have two albums now, we got plenty to pick from. So fingers crossed, we get to play before I have one foot in the grave. 8:16
On the live feel to the record – We’ve had a few comments from people that this has got a real live feel to it. We were very conscious, and Jeff is so good at that stuff, we were very conscious on Shake The World, we didn’t want that sort of over-produced, shiny, polished thing, and I think we accomplished that. We accomplished it more on this one, just to keep that edge. I get together with Jeff and go, “This is what I have”, and we tweak a couple of things and I step up to the microphone and we throw it down, and as I don’t sing a line, come back in two weeks and seeing another line. Even sometimes when there’s an imperfection, it’s just got that sort of spontaneous, live feel, and we’re going, “If it works, don’t fix it”. It may not be perfect, but it’s gonna be great. 10:42
On how busy he’s been since 2018 – You keep going, you know you have to do another record, “I don’t really don’t want to”. My wife, my wife, is a ginormous support. She goes, “You just get on my nerves. If you’re not doing music, you’re going to drive yourself nuts. This is what you do. You complain, and you go, “Now have this to do”. You do it and every day, you complain, “I’ll never get this done”.” And she goes, “Suddenly, you turn around and, oh, it’s done”. I’m 10 songs in, I think I’m maybe more, I think I’m a song or two short of submitting, not recorded, of course, but written on my next follow-up solo record already. Ready to start recording. Then in the midst of writing that, Black Swan comes out, and then I actually get a call from the (Michael) Schenker camp. He has about a month European tour coming up, starting April 27th to the middle of May, and Ronnie Romero is his frontman for the 50 Anniversary record also on the New Universe record from Michael and Ronnie was unable to fulfill the last five shows, three in Spain, two in Italy. I get an email going, “I need an immediate answer, can you fill in this hole?” I’m going, “I’m recording a solo record”. Two or three days after that, after I’m going, “Okay, I’ll do it. This is a lot of work just for five shows”. Careful what you say “Yes” to, because I said yes, and then I get the setlist of 25 songs, and I said to my wife, “I’ll be coming home in a box”. Three, four days later after I say, “Yes”, I get another email going. “The whole tour is now open. Can you do the whole tour?” So now, certainly all of the European shows are open to me, so I will actually leave home on the 22nd of April, unexpectedly to the European leg of the Schenker tour. I know he just advertised a plethora of dates for the US or North America, Ronnie is down for that unless he’s not. But, it’s good to be at the ready. It’s good to be working after this damn covid thing, and I think it’ll be hard to stop people working once we get going because we’ve been hanging for this just for a little too long. As regards to those in masks, I had more shots, I wish they came out of a bottle, but they didn’t. 12:30
On the track “Wicked The Day” – That whole story is actually about the bastard son of King Arthur. People go, “I didn’t know he had a bastard son”, Yes, he did. He had a son, Mordred with his sister-in-law, and of course, the battle ensued. In Olde English, you wouldn’t call it a wicked day, it’s wicked the day. Jeff was going, “That doesn’t sound right”, I said, “It sounds right to me, I’m Irish”. Even though King Arthur was English, but that’s a whole different story. It’s one of my favorite tracks. I just love the feel of that thing when they sent me the music for that, oh my God, I got goosebumps. I’m going, “Oh, I just can’t wait to get into this”, and then I went down into a hole and I’m going, “But what am I going to sing about?” I love researching stuff, the little things in music where you go, “This is it. There’s the title right there”. Then I read up about it and we make sure I get it somewhat correct. So that’s what that’s about. It’s one of my personal favorites…Ronnie James Dio sang about Rainbows, why can’t I sing about King Arthur? There’s no dragons in there, I don’t think I mention dragons in any of the songs. 16:19
On the album artwork – The cover is really important. Stan Decker did the Shake The World one, and then also did Generation Mind. He has the patience of Job because Jeff and Reb put on me sort of, “Dude, you know about this stuff. You take it and just keep us posted”. And I’m going, “Oh, come on”. But I had ideas, I had ideas all the way, right before we even got into the music of what we should do with this one. It started up basically being based on the mask of the plague doctors back in the black plague days. So they wore these sort of big type masks and I can conjure up some images, some renderings in graphics, so I got into Photoshop and I started putting the play doctor beak on swan heads and doing all sorts of stuff. I was flooding Stan with this kind of stuff. Then we decided we needed to change gears and go forward into sort of a more alien-esq approach, steampunk, that sort of thing. Then I was watching the movie “Alien”, and I would take still shots and get the colors, and I’m going blue, cold steel, that’s what need, that’s the kind of stuff. We got there, poor Stan was going, “Guy’s out of his head”. We persevered and he’s just such a good artist, and he never whimpers, he just takes it and he just kept sending different renderings till I went, “That’s perfect. That’s the color”. It’s just so much fun too because you’re at the drawing board, you’re creating something. I don’t think there’s one other cover, if you lined up the current 10, 20 albums right now, there isn’t one cover that looks anything remotely like it, nothing, and that’s what I like. It just stands out. Whether you love it or hate it, I don’t, of course, I care, but I don’t care. But there isn’t anything that looks like it. It Absolutely sticks out there always. It’s a piece of art. Hopefully, it matches the art (on the inside). The vinyl, I believe is in a crystal finish. Which is really, really, really cool. I mean, one of my sons collects vinyl and he’s got a turntable and it’s just really cool stuff. That’s good stuff, and I’m glad to see how in the past, what, five, six-plus years vinyl is just (growing), people are going, “This sounds really cool”. It was always cool. 18:51
