The Cold Stares have been working their way to the forefront of the blues scene since their 2014 debut A Cold Wet Night was released. They have taken a major step forward with their sixth release Voices, a stunning record that pushed the boundaries of the blues-rock genre. Recently, guitarist and vocalist Chris Tapp took some time to talk about the new record with me.
Please press the PLAY icon for The Blues Fix with Chris Tapp of The Cold Stares –
On recently becoming a trio with the addition of a bass player – I just kinda felt like as a duo, we’d kinda run its course as far as creatively. It was a good thing early on because it kind of put some parameters on the songwriting if we wanted to pull it off live. But we had done a European tour in ’21 and came back from that and had some conversations with that record label and some other people. I wasn’t able to play the guitar solos live, we were kind of working around that and doing some stuff, but we just kinda felt like it was time. Going into the Voices record, I wanted to add a bass player to be able to write as a three-piece instead of a two-piece. :52
On if there was a challenge to writing for a bass player – Not so much a challenge, but more like more options on the buffet, trying to decide what to take and what not to. Before, I was still playing bass parts in the studio, I was just trying to stay pretty close to the guitar a lot of times, if I didn’t track it with the guitar, if I tacked it with the bass. But with this record, I didn’t really write any of Bryce (Klueh)’s parts, I just came up with this stuff and said, “Hey, what do you think fits here?” Nine times out of 10, he nailed it, but we wanted to add bass and be able to move fluidly without being attached to the guitar, which it always had been before. 1:57
On the diversity of styles and sounds on Voices – We had done that to a certain extent with doing some acoustic stuff before, but never, especially in the electric realm, kinda pushed ourselves to play outside where we normally would. I just felt like it was time (for) some statements that I wanted to make and some things I wanted to do, and having Bryce on the bass allowed us to be able to do that and play some things we haven’t played before, and just kinda mix it up. A lot of the records that I really love, Led Zeppelin III, a lot of stuff from the 70s really has a broad palette, some different textures, and stuff, and I always like that. There’s a few bands, AC/DC, The Cult, there’s a couple of bands that you can go from track one to track ten, and it all is similar, but still works. I kind of felt like Heavy Shoes is more like a record like that for us. This record, I wanted to kinda push out and see what we can do, and a lot of that was just testing the waters to see what worked and what didn’t. 3:11
On his musical journey – Whenever I was a little kid, I started playing piano whenever I was four, I was writing songs at like six or seven, and basically, I would just take songs that were on the radio and re-write the words to them. I don’t know why I did that, but it was a great learning structure to understand songs and understand, “Okay, we’re at the bridge, we’re at the chorus”, or why he’s repeating that line, that must be the thing he’s trying to get across, or she’s trying to get across. We’re kids of the 90s, and the grunge stuff was really popular when we were coming up. I guess I’ve always been a little bit of a historian about why is this like this or where did this come from? Also, we were all fortunate, or Brian and I were fortunate, Bryce listened to his older brother’s catalog, Brian and I both had friends when we were growing up that were a decade older than us, that we’re listening to their older brothers, Zeppelin albums or Cream records. So it was a pretty easy, it was a short crawl to get back to the originators of rock and roll, and I found that super interesting. Then I think when you do that, then it’s kind of like a chef, if you got more ingredients in there to pull from. I’m not a fan of bands that do the exact same thing if somebody that they emulate. I love (Eric) Clapton, but I don’t wanna make something that sounds just like “Cocaine”. So for us it’s, “This kinda works with this”. I always felt like the story songwriting of the early blues artists and guys like (Bob) Dylan and (Johnny) Cash would really fit well in the realm of rock and blues stuff. I already had been in there in some stuff, but to even push it even further and just to make sure when we’re writing a song that it lyrically also speaks and has a statement. Black Sabbath is a great example of that. You look at songs like “War Pigs” or some of those songs, they really lyrically if you read them, they’re making a statement lyrically, as well as having a cool music part. 4:40
On writing very personal lyrics – The lyric always comes out. It’s the filter of “Do I wanna go here or not?” A lot of the songs in the early catalog and stuff that I’ve written has been…it could be a song, Iike “Break My Fall” off of Head Bent, that’s a song about a guy that gets hung for something that he didn’t do. Obviously, I haven’t ever been to the gallows, but that sentiment of, I’ve gone through a divorce around that time and that sentiment of getting accused of something that you didn’t do. So sometimes I’m writing a playwrite In which the narrative fits something that’s going on in my life, but is not super autobiographical as far as being able to read it exactly. On this new record, there were a couple of things that I just wrote just straight from the heart. “Sorry I Was Late” was one of those that I didn’t write that for the record, I’ve got a keyboard in, I was working on some organ stuff and I got a keyboard in and I sat down and that was kind of the first thing I played and had to start writing lyrics as a song about my Grandad who passed away, committed suicide, whenever I was young, and I was the one that had found him, got the call to check on him. I’m sure that that tragedy probably had found its way into some other songs kind of subversively, but I just wrote, it just came out. I probably wrote the thing in three minutes. The problem finishing it was trying to sing the damn thing without getting upset. The vocal took me about three weeks to be up to get through it. That one, when I got done with it, I was like, “Well, you know this record, we really wanna do some things we haven’t done before. I haven’t done a keyboard song”, and I just feel like if I put this out and it helps one other person that’s dealt with something similarly, or even a loss of whatever, that that helps, then I think it’s good Karma, a good thing. I didn’t wanna be selfish and go, “Okay, well, this makes me feel a little bit better about the situation, but I can’t share it” now,”. You don’t wanna share something that will hurt somebody, you do wanna share something if it helps somebody that’s good for the whole world, I feel like. 7:57
On getting songs placed in television shows and commercials – Yeah, it’s changed a lot. Radio helps. Now, with Satellite radio, XM Radio, the Blues Channel plays our stuff and that helps. Last fall, we had a Chevy truck commercial that ran all through the football season, and I kept getting messages. I’d posted it on our social media, but I kept getting messages still that would say, “Hey man, some band ripped off your sound. There’s a band, it sounds just like you’re in the Chevy commercial”, I’m like, “Dude, I posted that three times, you haven’t seen it, that’s us”. Those things help exponentially. They give validation to the band. It’s like the Cyber Punk video game that those things give validation, say, “Okay, you’re writing at a level that professionals feel like this will help sell their product or whatever else”. It definitely helps financially because as you know, streaming is just, you can’t make a living off of people listening to your music anymore. Touring helps, but also, as you know, in the last few years, touring can get crushed in a moment, and even though we’re back touring now, venues are very afraid to invest much in the show with afraid of losing things, they can’t hire people, people are not coming in the bars and the venues and theaters to work. So it’s tough. So we’re always trying to get those things. We’ve had a few of those that we’ve passed on that I felt like the money was great, but I don’t wanna sell crackers or mayonnaise, it has to fit. “Animal Kingdom” was a great fit. The video game was a great fit, Chevy and Dodge, it worked for Bob Seger, I’m not going to argue. It definitely helps, and it will definitely pay off a record. With Mascot, the record label we’re on now we haven’t had on those sinks, with the other deals that we had, we all had a sink and the sink would immediately pay for the record. We’re trying to climb out of that hole of investing all the money in the record, still, it’s tough. 10:53
On if the addition of a bass player allows them to expand their live set – For sure. And the ability to play the solos and the extra parts that I had on the record that I wasn’t able to before and just enjoying playing guitar. Before, I was playing two guitar amps and a bass amp simultaneously to cover to make it thick. Now I can not play if I want to, sit out for a measure, I can play cord instead of a single note. As a guitar player, it’s been extremely creative and forced me to work hard, but I also really enjoy it. 13:24
On upcoming touring plans – We’ve got some shows, some short-run shows in the States between now and May, then we’re in Europe, basically made to August first. I think we’re working on a run through Texas, working on a run down through Florida, and then something maybe in the northeast between August and January. 14:03
