Sebastian Bach was the voice of Skid Row for the band’s iconic first three records. Since leaving the band in 1996, he has embarked on a solo career that has seen him on the Broadway stage, television screens, and, of course, a string of successful solo records. He is about to release his sixth solo record, Child Within The Man, on May 10 and recently took some time to talk about it.
Please press the PLAY icon below to listen to the MisplacedStraws Sebastian Bach interview –
On taking 10 years between solo records – Well, three of those years didn’t count for any of us. Nobody was putting out albums in 2020. So I know that’s in my press release, but I always have to remind people that 2020 wasn’t the best time to release a new record. So nothing was happening for a while. But its boring, I never tried to talk about business in my interviews because I feel like so many of the interviews that I hear musicians do are so boring. They’re not funny. They’re not entertaining. I want to use an interview to make somebody laugh and have a smile on their face, not talk about the business, but very, very quickly I was signed to one record label that turned into another record label. Then that record label turned into this record label. So there was some business stuff that had to happen, but you can’t have success without a strong team.
I have an incredible team around me with Child Within The Man who have me back on the radio, which I did not realize was still possible for me. My new video has over 1 million views. You cannot mess with that. The fact that a million views on the first video and the record’s not even out, it’s not even out. We got a million views and the record’s not even out. I already feel like this is like a platinum album because when people are talking about millions, millions, and millions, and billions of views. I’m like, what decade is this, Jeff? Is this 1989 all over again or what?
On working with Elvis Baskette as producer – As a musician, for me, I, my inspiration for this record was my own vinyl collection. I am a collector of vinyl and I know what I like. I know the decade that I specifically collect is the seventies. I do collect from all decades, but the sound of records in the seventies to me is the best sound. Just, maybe that’s cause I grew up then as a little kid, that’s when I got into music. But I just feel like that’s the best-sounding era of music. So I set out as a project for Child Within The Man I said, “Sebastian, what if you made a record in 2024 that somehow felt like it was from 78?” That’s what I tried to do. I tried to make a record that I would love.
You talk about Elvis Baskette, he is such a true old-school producer. His recording console is a 1974 Neve board that Queen recorded albums on. We all lived in his studio in Orlando, Florida Studio Barbara Rosa for a month. I didn’t know that records were made that way anymore. I thought it was sending files back and forth and that’s not recording a band that’s recording your laptop. Elvis got us all in the room, looking at each other in the eye as we’re making this record and you can feel it, you can totally feel it. And if that’s not crazy enough, the guy who mastered the record is a guy by the name of Robert Ludwig. If you collect records, I don’t even need to say anything else. It’s fucking incredible that Robert Ludwig mastered my album. I’m a fan of my own album and I can tell you are a vinyl collector because this album, dude, is the only combination of Elvis Baskette with Robert Ludwig. My album, I made that, I made that happen. Those 2 guys together is unbeatable for me. The sound of it is exactly what I want, completely exactly.
On being a fan and having Robert Ludwig master his record – Well, when I go vinyl shopping, which is all the time, when I see his name on a record, I know that that record is going to be cherished in my collection, and that record is going to sound like butter, like hot butter on popcorn. I don’t know how else to describe this. For people who don’t know, he mastered Led Zeppelin II, “Whole Lotta Love”, Jimi Hendrix, Cry of Love, Kiss Alive, Steely Dan, the Eagles, it’s endless. When I lived in studio city, I was neighbors with Adam Jones, the guitar player from Tool and we became very good friends to the point where I would go swimming in his pool with our kids and they would hang out and go into bouncy house together. We became friends. When the new Tool record came out, I looked at the credits and it said, Mastered by Robert Ludwig. I go, “There’s no way that’s the same guy that I go collecting”, and he goes, “Yeah, it is dude”. He goes, “He’s in his eighties”. I go, “You cannot be serious. How can a guy have a career that long?” So I told my record company, “If you really want to make me happy, you really want me to be excited about doing interviews and selling this shit, put that fucking guy’s name on it. Then I’ll do interviews till the end of time about this album. And I’m happy to do it”. I know if you take a chance and get this new record, if you order it online or get it on May 10th, it’s not going to let you down. It’s of the highest quality sound and that’s all I set out to do. I just want to make the best record possible. And with Elvis Baskette, Robert Ludwig, Reigning Phoenix Music, Rick Sales Management, my team of players on the record, I’ve made the best album I could make.
On his lyrical inspiration for the record – You can only write about what you feel. I only make music to convey emotion, and I was stuck in my house for a lot of the time writing. A song “Hard Darkness” I wrote that song in the woods at three in the morning, drinking a bottle of wine by myself, wondering if I was ever going to be able to leave my property ever again, staring up at the moon, writing lyrics, wondering if anybody would ever hear these lyrics because that was a time where I didn’t know if rock and roll would ever exist again. So to have it come out and it’s “under the light of the moon”, I remember being out in the woods like the werewolf. Looking up at the moon with a bottle of red wine and a pen and a notepad and that’s what you’re hearing and you can hear lyrics. I don’t like to tell people what it is exactly that I wrote it about because people can infer their own meaning and I would not want to change that.
We live in crazy times, the world is divided. To me, there’s only one side when the one side is hate. That’s a line from the song “Future of Youth”. So I don’t want to say what I wrote about, but I have children and the album title Child Within the Man, not only refers to me being my dad’s child, but my children being my kids. The song, “Everybody Bleeds” the sentiment is that mother nature does not care if you’re left or right or black or white. We’re all in the same boat when it comes to the climate changing and the boat’s going to sink if we don’t figure this shit out for our kids. Just as a dad, I always every day think I want to leave this earth better for my kids than when I came into it and we’re not on that track right now. So, as a dad, I got to write something that I feel.
“Everybody Bleeds” the new song is (about) I lost my home in a hurricane and everybody told me, “Oh, that was a hundred-year storm. That’s never going to happen again for a hundred years”. It happened the next year, even worse. Then I moved to California and I got evacuated two years out of three for fires. So where the fuck should we all live? So I don’t want to get all heavy. I don’t just write about drinking and fucking, there’s other shit to write about. I want to write about stuff that’s important to me, but at the same time, a song like, “What Do I Got to Lose” is nothing but fun. That’s fun. And that’s got over a million views. I think that the fact that so many people are watching it says that people miss having fun and rock and roll. My record company really wanted a lyric video for “Everybody Bleeds” and I go, “Well, maybe that’s too heavy and dark because the first one was so much fun”, and they go, “Well, We really love this”. And I go, “I would do a video for every song on the record if you want. If you want me to do one for every song, no problem. Cause I love them all”. But I said to them, I go, “I think lyric videos are too boring”. And they go, “Everybody loves them”. I go, “I don’t love them”. I go, “Here’s the compromise. We’re going to do a lyric video where I’m singing the lyrics”. I’m a big comic book fan, and I’m a huge Maxell tape fan. So I said,” I’m going to be like the guy in the Maxell tape commercial, listening to the song, watching TV, and the band’s going to be on TV. And my house is going to be getting flooded like the lyrics. And then at the end, I’m going to say, fuck the TV and I’m going to put on the new record and start rocking out”. And they go, “Okay.” And there’s your video. And we shot that in one afternoon. The first video was like a seven-day production shooting. I shot four days myself on the first video. The next video is another big, huge-budget video. We spent a little too much money on that first one, but we’re going to do it again with the next one, which is the song “Hold On To The Dream” and that’ll be the next video coming out before the album comes out. It’s not a lyric video. It’s a big one.
On working with former Skid Row drummer Rob Affuso and Alter Bridge vocalist Myles Kennedy on this record – Well, it’s funny because Rob Affuso is blowing up my phone right now that’s pretty funny. I had met Myles Kennedy a couple times, but we weren’t close friends at all, but Elvis, as you just said, produces Myles, and Alter Bridge, and Mark Tremonti, and Slash, so he’s very close to Myles Kennedy. When I came in to make Child Within The Man, Elvis said that Myles contacted Elvis to say,”Would Sebastian want to hear any of his ideas”, and I was so touched. I have to thank Myles Kennedy and I don’t think this has come out and all my interviews enough. I say this in all the interviews, but I really want to get it across how thankful I am because it’s really something when a musician pays back a musician. I can only surmise that Myles Kennedy in 1989 was rocking out to Skid Row, “Youth Gone Wild” and “18”, like the rest of the world. Then for him in 2023 or whatever to say,” Let’s team up and write some songs for your new record”. I’m forever in debt because, I think the combination of his writing with my voice and my writing and my spirit and energy and Elvis’s production, all of that together, that got my voice back on the radio.
Now it’s doing incredible on FM radio across the country. I can’t even, I didn’t know that was still possible, man. I didn’t. I don’t see any other musician who put out his first album in 89, having a big song on the radio in 2024. If there is one congratulations, but I can’t tell you how glorious that feels like the whole premise and title and concept of this record is that rock and roll makes you feel like a little kid. Rock and roll keeps you young in some weird way and nothing makes me feel more like a young kid than having a hit song on the radio in 2024, like I did when I was 20 with “18 & Life”. So it’s the same feeling now for me. I can never thank Myles Kennedy enough for teaming up with me because the results are 1 million views on the video. It’s unreal. Thank you. Thank you very much.
On how he would define success with this record – It’s already successful and it’s not even released yet. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that it’s got over 1 million views. In 89, if you sold a million records, that’s a platinum album. Nobody can buy this record yet. Well, you can pre-order it, but you can’t buy it. But they’re like, “Well, I’ve got to hear it”. So to me, that’s the same kind of thing. I don’t know what this is, the fans have shown me that I can be like Willie Nelson or George Strait or Neil Young or Sammy Hager. I can be like that, dude. I can keep doing this when I’m 70, 80, God willing that I’m still around, but I know how to sing. I know how to warm up my voice to get it to do what you guys want it to do and what I want it to do. There’s no difference for my vocals. The only difference is that because everybody’s filming everything I can’t run around as much, but it was always like that. It was like that in Skid Row. If I’m jumping off the drum riser. It’s not going to sound like the record, but there’s something to be said for jumping off the drum riser. It’s not either/or, you got people would be fucking bored if I just stood there. So I gotta figure out how to do it both. It’s physically very challenging. Ask anybody who tried to replace me.
On his time on The Masked Singer – We are a hundred percent singing in costumes. A hundred percent. That’s how we do it like three or four times that day. So obviously they could probably take a take from the afternoon soundcheck if they wanted to, and I’m sure they do stuff like that, but every clip that you see of that is me singing to that crowd in the audience and then realizing that it’s going on TV. I’m very proud of what I did on that show. I did Elton John, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”. I did “Magic” by Pilot, which to me, my vocal, I fucking knocked it out of the park. That song, I don’t want to come across like a bragger. I’m just saying I set a goal to sing that and it’s a high vocal. It’s up there. It’s “Oh, Oh, Oh, it’s magic”. It’s pretty fucking high, and I wore that costume and I nailed it. You can watch it on Hulu right now if you want. I’m very proud of that. I also did Lady Gaga “Monster”, which I also did a great job on from a vocal standpoint, and I did not even know that song at all. I did that song in a throwdown, vocal competition and I never could ever conceive that I’d be in the bottom round of the Masked Singer. I go, “I don’t need to learn that Lady Gaga song because there’s no way I’m going to be in the bottom round”. And sure enough, they go, “Sebastian, it’s a vocal throwdown”. If you’re going to have a vocal throwdown against me, you better be fucking ready to rock because I flicked a switch in my head. When they said that I go, “There’s no way that I’m going to lose to this person on TV. There’s no way, I’m not going to lose.” So I just, I have that capability in me to say, “I’m going to go up there right now and kick ass right now, everybody better look out and get out of the way because I’m going to kick ass”. I said that to myself and I did. Then I got to do Kiss,” I Was Made for Loving You”. Everybody knows I worship Kiss, but, honestly, the vocals of Kiss are not my style of vocals. Mine are more like Priest or Journey. But I love “I Was Made For Loving You” and so I combined the lead vocal melody that Paul does with the background vocal and I alternated going from low to high and I just made it something I’m proud of. But yes, we’re all singing. Well, I don’t know if the other guys are singing, but I’m a hundred percent singing on that, 100 percent.