The Dead Daises are one of the most interesting music collectives on the rock scene today. The band boasts a fluid roster of A-list talent that continues to put out high-quality, kick-ass rock n’ roll. Doug Aldrich, one of the longest-tenured members of the band, recently took some time to talk about their upcoming record, featuring the return of John Corabi, and tour.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Doug Aldrich interview –
On the current line-up of the band – This tour is Tommy Clufetos, he’s brand new. He’s back. He’s returning back. He is on drums. Everybody knows Tommy from White Zombie and Ozzy and Sabbath. Then on bass, we’ve got Michael Devin from Whitesnake and Lynch Mob. He’s just an incredible player everybody knows and he’s a great singer as well. Then of course, me and David Lowy on guitar and John Corabi, the return of John Corabi. So it’s very exciting time right now. We got new music with Corabi fronting the band and the single came out just today. So we’re really excited about everything. We got the record, I think it’s slated to come out like September-ish, something like that, but it’s a good album to work out to, or drive road trip, it’s like straight-up rock and roll. It’s got a great vibe.
So that’s that’s it. The tour starts at the beginning of June, we start in New York. I was just gonna say, just to make it easy, check thedeaddaisies.com for the tour dates and stuff, because there’s only a few in the U. S. It’s like two weeks, 10 shows, something like that, or 12. But it’s gonna be a lot of fun and we’ll lengthen the U. S. later in the year or next year.For the moment, this is what we got for June. So check out thedeaddaisies. com.

On if the band will play new songs on the June tour – Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We can’t wait, man. That’s the whole fun of going back on the road is having new material to play. “Light ‘Em Up” is for sure going to be a staple in the set for a while. That’s kind of classic Daisy’s type of riff and groove and stuff. It’s just really good. Corabi sounds great. The riff was from our buddy, Stevie D from Buckcherry. He came up with the riff and then we wrote the song. built the song around that. So Marti Fredreikson and Stevie had that riff and Marti said, “What do you think about this?” We were like, “That’s kick ass. That sounds great”. So it turned into a really good song and we wanted to start off the whole thing with that one.
On if the creative process is the same regardless of who is in the band – No, it’s different every time with different people. When we had Glenn (Hughes) we were writing kind of writing individually and then bring our completed ideas together and then we’d kind of rework them. With this lineup with John and Marti, we really like to do stuff creatively from the get-go. One of the things that’s so cool about Marti is he’s not afraid to trash a song and just go, “Nope”. You get a song together and you’re like, “Ok, that is what it is. It’s cool. It’s got a good vibe”, and whatever and Marti will be the first one to go, “It’s not, the chorus isn’t working, or we need to do this or that”. Then you dig deep and you come and you change it and it’s like, “Whoa, he was right”.
Even at the last minute, there was one song, we were just at the very last day of tracking. We were just going to toss out this one song and bring in another song that we had already, we had. You obviously have more ideas than you can record, but he was going to chuck this song out and we were going to do this other one. We were kind of like, “Damn, that’s really a good song” and he pushed us and he was right. It was really cool because it turned out to be a very strong song. So I really enjoy the whole process.
What we do is we’ll all get together and jam on something in the studio, we’ll put down the idea as we’re playing live, come in and review it. Then we’ll start to make changes might just decide like, “You know what, let’s just chop this section out and hear what it sounds like without that other section, or let’s double that section and see what that sounds like,” and then we’ll go back and retrack it. It’s just a very fun, creative time. It unfortunately just goes by very quickly. The whole recording process is literally, we did the record in a week, basically, as far as the recording and stuff.
On what Corabi brings to the band – It’s just an easy thing with John. I just want to say this because I’ve been very blessed to work with amazing singers my entire career, it’s crazy. Corabi on this record stands out, man. He’s never sounded better. He’s just going strong and he brings the same thing he did to Motley Crue. He just brings a straight-up, sleazy rock-and-roll sound. John’s that guy, man. He’s a sleazy guy. Just kidding. He brings that really greasy, sleazy rock and roll thing and it’s taking nothing away from Glenn because Glenn’s obviously legendary and we had a great time playing together. I love him, Glenn’s like my brother., It’s just an easy fit with John.
I think that’s when The Dead Daisies started to develop into a band more than just what they started, which was kind of a collective, and it’s still is a collective, but John makes it into more of a band vibe. When he came in the band and him and Richard Fortus and (Brian) Tichy and Marco Mendoza and those guys that was like, “Okay, that’s a band”. There’s changes that happen, whatever, but Corabi, he definitely feels at home.
On the band being so prolific in releasing new music – It’s not on purpose. It’s really that we just enjoy it. When John came back last year, we were supporting this Best Of release and so we just had a few ideas and John had a couple of song ideas. I had some Marti had some. Marti’s an amazing songwriter on top of everything else. Michael had a few ideas. David had a few. So we decided to kind of bang through a few. Once we got some that we felt were (good), once we kind of discovered what we had, it was like, “Let’s just meet up with Marti and pop these, top and tail these songs”.
But yeah, it’s a good thing. As far as those Resurrected things, those are kind of like Best Of, but deeper cuts or whatever. It’s got different lineups on different songs or whatever. So it’s kind of like a retrospective of deep cuts from the band throughout the years.
We have a great management team and a group of people that work behind the scenes, making it easier for the musicians to just play music. They take over and they’ll put stuff together and just run with it, it’s teamwork. We’re all good with it. That’s how this thing works is by team effort.
On putting together a set list that touches on the different lineups – I would say we try to generally, if we’re going to play a song that was written with a different lineup or recorded with a different lineup, we try to pay respect to that song the way that it was recorded. But that being said, there’s only one Richard Fortus. I’m going to do my best to hit the melodies the way that he did it, but then there might be some filling in spots that I’m like, “I don’t know how he’s doing that. So I’m going to do it this way”, which is kind of normal. When Corabi sings, he’s singing the same notes, but it sounds like it’s a John song automatically. It’s the same with anybody. When Glenn would sing a John song, it started to sound like a Glenn song, but it was sung with the same notes. It’s just. Glenn’s tone or John’s tone, depends, but when John sings even a Glenn song, it sounds like a John song.
On if he and David Lowy have goals as to where they want the band to go – For me, I let it evolve because in this particular band, I think my role, obviously for playing lead guitar and being a guitar head or whatever, that’s, that’s my job. But my role is basically a supporting role. If somebody says, “Hey, we need a riff, some kind of badass bluesy riff “or something. I’m the first one to go home and start plowing through stuff, just playing, playing at things and about get ideas and put them down. Or if somebody says, “Hey, I got this, this thing, I don’t really know where to go with it”, I’m happy to work on it. It’s like supporting. It’s always been that way with me, supporting the singer, basically. That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to write songs that the singer is going to like, and I don’t really worry about it. If he likes it, cool. If not, then we’ll work on something else, but that’s kind of how I’ve always been. It’s the same with this band. David is the founder, the leader of the band, but he lets different people do different things so that we’re all carrying our weight. It’s not like we’re waiting around for somebody to make a decision, but if somebody’s got an idea, we all know what to do to make it happen.
On if there was ever a lineup of the band that just didn’t gel – Actually, not really because when I came in it was like I’ve played with these guys all before and I just met David. He and I pretty much had talked about what he was looking for in a lead guitar player, and he told me what he was good at and I was like, “Cool, that sounds great”.
I kind of learned when I was working with Reb Beach that it’s really an interesting thing when you’ve got two guys that are kind of bringing different vibes to it. It really helps and it makes it fun for me. But no, to answer your question. No, I don’t think so. Everybody that’s come in has either been in the band before me. Like Brian Tichy was, he was in the band before me and then he went away for a year or two something and then he came back and so it was easy, it’s super easy. So no, we never plan it out. If somebody’s not available and we bring somebody else in, we’re going to bring in somebody that either has kind of done it with us before or somebody that we’ve all individually played with. So that way you know what you’re going to get. It’s interesting because a lot of times you would think about musicians that would be really good together, but if they actually played together, it might not be. That’s a big part of any band is being able to hang out together and be friends together.
That’s so important, and that’s something that I would say this is off topic a little bit but talking about for younger musicians who are putting a band together. The most important thing is how you guys manage a friendship and a relationship and can you hang together on a bus for 15 or 20 hours? Or could you hang out with this person in the airport for 24 hours? Cause that stuff happens on the road and you got to be able to hang out.
On his upcoming plans – The Dead Dasies has been my number one priority for the past 4 years. When I stopped being a part of the Revolution Saints project, I focused 100 percent on the Daisies. I do write different stuff that maybe wouldn’t be for the Daisies. I just kind of tuck it away or whatever. Maybe I’ll get into that at some point, but at the moment we are really busy promoting the tour that’s just around the corner next month. Then this album is going to come out and we’re going to be busy. We’re doing the U.S. dates, we got UK dates and European dates, and we’ll probably fill in a few other things. But other than that, when I’m home, I’m doing family stuff. It’s really important to me, it’s important when you got little kids that you’re around and that you can do things with them that are memories. So right now my daughter’s eight and I’m really blessed to be able to be home sometimes where I’m not always gone.