Robin McAuley has been on a huge roll the past decade. He has put out killer records with Black Swan and Michael Schenker and is now about to release his third solo record called Soulbound. His voice is a strong as ever with great songs to match. Recently, Robin took some time to talk about his upcoming record and much more!
Please press the PLAY icon for the MisplacedStraws Robin McAuley interview –
On if he is getting more comfortable creating with the Italian musicians on his record – Absolutely. First and foremost, we started out kind of similar to standing on the edge of the live with, with Alessandro Del Vecchio doing the co-writing. Andrea Seveso, who played guitar on the first two records, always loved him. Loved his tone loved his melodies. So, it was really important for me on this one that I was going to sort of push him a little bit more to the front and I wanted him more on the attack. So, he’s much more involved in the writing this time. Then, Alessandro leaves the label, and I was introduced to Aldo (Lonobile), Aldo came in and we had our chat, and I went, “I really want to more guitar oriented on this. We put keys where we need them, but if we don’t need them, we won’t”. He added Alfonso Mocerino on drums this time, who’s an absolute powerhouse from Milan. He also introduced another guitar player Alessandro Mammola. He’s featured a lot on it and of course, Aldo is a great guitar player, great bass player. So now I have plenty of dishes in the sink and I’m having a blast.
We got into the writing, we got into the song selection. I had actually selected the entire record. Aldo came in and he said, “I’m here now let’s rethink this”. So, he suggested four or five, I think he actually sent me about six different songs. I think we picked, I’m going to say four, maybe three or four out of that batch. Some I rewrote, “Soulbound” was written by Teresa Persson and Jan Akersson, two Swedish writers. I just re sang the demo to make it more sound like my kind of song. I love the title and I went, “I’m going to go with this if everybody likes it”. And they went, “We love this. This is great”. Artwork is awesome. Again, Nello Del Olmo. Third time I’ve worked with Nello. He’s just inside my head. I’m really happy, to answer your question, it’s a very powerful band. Finally, I will get to actually have all of those guys with me at the Frontiers Music Festival. April 27th will be my day, the last day of the three-day festival in Milan. So, get your tickets now. I’m really, really looking forward to that.
On if the record was recorded remotely or in person – Everything’s remote. It’s an amazing thing. People were asking me actually earlier this morning, “Don’t you miss the old days of, now that you have the internet and everything is media is more accessible, don’t you miss the sort of touchy feely, the tangible?” I’m like, “Nothing like going to the old record store and sifting through the shelves for all of those smelly vinyls and CDs and all of that sort of stuff”. Going there was an outing, and yeah, you miss that. Not unlike the recording process. They dump a bunch of stuff on my laptop. I pick it up, I open each little package. But there’s no touchy feely involved. You do it. I work with the same engineer as I always do, Andy Zuckerman. The funny thing with Andy is he gets all of the stems for him to record my vocals. I go to Andy, and he has absolutely no idea what it is that I’m going to be singing unless I send him a demo, which I sometimes do. Sometimes I’m going, “I forgot to send the demo”. Then you got to sing through the track, you mark it up. He goes, “Well, there’s the bar. So, there’s three choruses”. It’s kind of funny, but we get it done. We’re set up, we know the mics that I’m going to use and then we send it across the universe, and it lands either in Naples or Milan and Aldo picks it up and he goes, “Okay, I got it. Let me have a listen”. We’ve been doing it for years. So of course it works. Of course it works. It’s super easy. You don’t have to get in a plane and go there with the masters and then set it up on an analog machine.
By contrast with my Black Swan stuff, segue there is a third Black Swan coming. We’ll talk about that. That is much more personable because I get to go to the studio. I get the, hang with Jeff (Pilson), I get to hang with Reb (Beach), we get to work it together. Yes, after the job’s done, we send the digital files out and we make little changes, and I go back and make the changes and that sort of stuff. There’s more of a connection there. On a solo level, it’s a very lonely life. It’s just me and the microphone and I sit, and I write the songs, and I send them back and I wait for a comment and they pretty much let me do my thing, which is, it’s good and bad. I mean, it allows me to do and put my stamp on the solo stuff. It definitely sounds different than the Black Swan stuff, or if I did an MSG track or something, because there’s much more involved with that. So yes, I love it. And yes, I hate it sometimes.
On if his voice gets stronger the more he sings – It’s a muscle. Runners run because the more they do, the more in top and in good shape they are. They have to be careful because like everything else, it’s brittle. It can break. So, there’s a lot of stuff that you have to do to stay on top of your game, as it were, not easy. It’s a complete pain in the butt for me because it’s like I’m thinking, the guitar players have so much more fun. So do the drummers. They can have a cold. They can be feeling crappy from the night before and they can still get up there and do it. The singer, he complains, it’s like, “Eh, stinking singers”.
My wife would attest to it, I put a huge amount of pressure on myself because it’s the only real acoustic instrument on stage. I use my in ears and all of that sort of stuff. It has to be in the right place, it’s not the battle of the bands. It’s the battle of the guitar players, you know but we make it work. I take great care of it. I do everything that I possibly can from one night to the next and you’re always in a panic. Is it there, is it as good as I want it to be? Then you have to open your mouth and start singing and people go, “Oh my God”.
I just came back from Sweden last week. I did a show in Sweden. I’m going back to Sweden. I have a bunch of shows lined up, already advertised for the UK, Germany is coming up on the bill, Spain, and I will play, perform the Monsters of Rock cruise with Michael Schenker on March 10-15. So yeah, I feel pretty good. I’m 72 now, but I don’t have a walker yet. I’ve got plenty of tennis balls. So you know what you got to do, love it. I still love it. I’m blessed. I’m not ready yet.
On the lyrics to the song “There Was A Man” –Well there was a man. There was a man and you know it depends which side of the fence you’re sitting on, I kind of felt it was an appropriate track to close out the record with. I’m not on a pedestal. I have nothing to tell anybody. I just tell myself. When I listen to the music that’s given to me, I have zero idea where it’s going to go. I mean, zero. I don’t have a book of unused lyrics, unused words. I don’t have any of that. So, everything happens in the moment, and I can sit down with a piece of music and I really have to spend a lot of time with it, listening to what the guitar players are doing, the bass players doing, what are those little nuances that are in the song. It’s like a really blank, it’s completely blank in here and I’m going, I have no idea what to do with it. The more I listen, the more the song will tell me what to do.
Sometimes just a chord structure that’s in there will shoot out a name. Give me a title and that’s what happened on “There was a Man”, and it seemed so appropriate, and I just started writing basically about where I am in life and why am I here and what did I do to get here and who did I meet along the way. It’s an old story. It’s very old story. I just write my sort of take. Thankful and grateful, I think is what I’m trying to say. There was a man and because of that man, that’s important to me is where I am today. I have family and I have a life, and I have all of the rest. Very simple for me.
I don’t want to get too deep into it, but that’s basically what I’m saying. Some things are super, super, super important to me, and I’m always a little, I’m cautious about whether I put those down in words. People go, “There we go. There he goes”. I don’t want to be “there he goes”. If you take and get something from it, my job is a good job. If it’s something you completely do not relate to, but you like the music, that’s okay. That’s okay. That’s okay too. So that’s really what it is. It’s just a little story about me getting where I am.
On creating a lyric that allows the listener to see themselves in it – That’s key. That’s always key for me because I set out with my thought process. Then I put it down and I’ll change it as I go. I’m going in, now you’re preaching. I’ll do that and then I’ll start to shift the tone a little bit. Where I still follow the path, if you’ll excuse the expression. I still follow that path of train of thought. But then I opened many different doors. I’m going, “You can take it this way. You can do that”. Again, I do find people say, “Oh my God, this means this to me. And this means that to me, I can’t believe when I heard this, that I was like, oh my God, that’s exactly where I was.” Then you find all of these little avenues of doors and you’re going, “Wow”. Who was it that said “The pen is mightier than the sword”? It’s a powerful thing. It’s a powerful thing.
On if he is planning any US shows – I’ve been getting it in the neck since the UK dates went up and it goes, “Oh, what are we, chop liver here, dude?” So, my answer to that is, of course, yes,ideally, yes. What I need to happen is through your wonderful show is the UK shows happened because I did Fire Fest in Manchester. I headlined it in October and how that came about was the promoter said, “Hey, I’ve seen MSG now for the last blah, blah, blah and I don’t hear any McAuley Schenker songs. We want to hear McAuley Schenker songs, and I have a bunch of fans that want to hear McAuley Schenker songs. Will you do a show where we get two thirds of the show or more McAuley Schenker songs that we don’t hear on a regular MSG show on that one?” Okay, I’ve got to do some homework, because I haven’t sang them in years, right? So off we went, and since Fire Fest, there’s a plethora of promoters in Europe. This is how the Swedish gig happened, and now they invited me back for another festival and they want to hear those songs. So what needs to happen is a UK promoter, or a US promoter going, “We’d like to hear those songs too”. And, and it’s really easy to get old of me. There needs to be an interest, obviously, because I can come up with a whole bunch of dates and people go, “Sorry, I can’t make it”. It’s logistics. It’s supply and demand. That’s really what it is. So yes, yes, of course. I want to play US shows and we will work on it and see what the interest level is where it’s at. Maybe we come to a town near you.
On the third Black Swan record – Excellent question. When I was with Jeff, Jeff says,” Hey, maybe we can make March” and I’m going, “Isn’t it March already?” So probably not March. I would. I would imagine sort of the third quarter of the year, I would imagine. That would kind of make more sense because everything has to go into place. I know Matt (Starr) started recording drums already. He’s not done. Foreigner’s really busy, so Jeff’s busy. Winger’s (busy), what Reb’s done is just great. May I just tell you, not too many giveaways. He is just killing it. I think it’s great. I think it’s great. You walk into it and you go, “Eh, are we doing it? Is this good?” I think it’s a great record, yeah, I think it’s a great record. Some great tunes on there. There’s just some awesome playing on there. I would think kind of like the third quarter would be good. Winger’s doing a bunch of shows. I will actually, hopefully see him on the Frontiers Festival come April. I’m sure they’ll be going, well now, and Matt’s going to be there. So, Matt’s already made a comment. “Hmm, let me think. I’m there. You’re there. Reb’s there. How do we get Pilsen here and pull this off?” So, yeah, who knows? Fingers crossed. Who knows?
On if he appreciates success more now than early in his career – Ooh. Success. There’s a big word. I don’t know if I’m successful. I’m successful in so much as I can I can keep doing what I love to do. That’s success for me. Monetarily, I’m not so sure. More of the art than none of us are making any money off of this. The art of the art is great. I’m loving the fact that we can still create new music. That’s just great. That’s just great. Because how deep is that hole? What else is down there? Haven’t we done this before? All of that sort of stuff. That’s always a big question. How do I make this different? What do I do that’s different? Some people, on the life front, actually don’t want you to do anything different. They just don’t. I’ve tried several different things. I’m working on several different other non-typical projects and there’s always somebody goes, “Eh, I like it better when you’re doing the other stuff”. Somebody just won’t let you wear that cap, that different jacket. But the fact that there are those opportunities available is pretty awesome. Especially at my age that I can get up and look forward to going out and jumping on a plane and going and doing a show because somebody wants it. That’s, I mean, I feel pretty special. I feel very blessed by the whole thing. As long as that continues to happen, and I stay well I think we can dig into that bag and find more music. So, and I think that’s great. I appreciate it all. It’s awesome. I mean, it’s awesome.
