Black Swan is more than the sum of its parts. Robin MCauley’s voice and lyrics propel the songs created by Reb Beach and Jeff Pilson, while Matt Starr takes up the drums. Their third record, Paralyzed, will be released on February 27 and continues the hot streak this unique band started with their first two releases. Recently, Robin McAuley took some time to discuss the record and much more!
Please press the PLAY icon for the MisplacedStraws Robin McAuley Black Swan interview –
On if scheduling was the reason for the delay between Generation Mind and Paralyzed – Always. Always so much Foreigner stuff going on. So much of the end times for the Winger shows. I had my third solo record in the middle of all that too, Soulbound. So now three solos, three Black Swans. It’s six records in sort of that kind of a space. But you know, things get moved around and I know that the label Frontiers they made a change. We have a new A&R guy, and he takes care of all of the mixing the production, Aldo Lonobile that came into play scheduling there. Poor Aldo when you’re in his shoes and you get the kitchen sink and everybody else’s sink thrown at you, and there’s a deadline, which is usually tomorrow. It’s very hard to get it all done. But we did, we got it done and here we are.
On Black Swan sounding different from any of their other bands – I’m glad you said that. Well, you know everybody’s background but then you put different elements together. You’re going to get something different. I’m never going to be writing like Kip Winger, for example or David Coverdale. It’s all the elements of, and it’s a new garden full of new veggies and yeah, we’re happy with it. The songwriting has definitely progressed from the first Shake The World into Generation Mind to, into now Paralyzed, and we found our, our niche, I think we, we sound like a band.
Everybody knows how the whole project came together, but it sounds like a band. I think fair to say, we don’t just come up with a bunch of ideas and go, “Yeah, that’s fine. That’ll do. That’ll do. As long as we got 10, 12 tongs, we’re fine.” It’s not like that. We put it together. We make sure every song gets all of the attention that it needs to dig in and get the best out of it. I think, gloating a little bit, but it, it sounds like that’s what we do. We’re happy with it.
On if it helps having Jeff Pilson in the producer role – For sure. I mean, considering that Jeff never wanted to play bass to begin with, with Black Swan, he just wanted to follow the direction from the label and find a bunch of guys. He knew Reb, he knew me. But we’d never worked together collectively, he didn’t wanna play bass. S wanted to be, you know, take it, take a step back and just produce maybe songwriting. But we insisted that, you’re gonna be in this, you’re gonna play bass because that’s what we wanted.
Regarding the songwriting, that hasn’t changed. Reb is in Pittsburgh, he comes into LA, I live pretty close to Jeff, and they spend a couple of weeks wood shedding, and they come up with the first batch of songs. Rep takes off to do what he does, then it lands on my desk. I spend a lot of time with it, coming up with melodies, storylines lyrics. I demo everything. I’ll shoot it back to both of them and go, “This is what I have for this song. This is what it’s called. What do you think?” Reb will go, “You’re singing a major over a minor chord there. Did you know that dude?” Those kind of things, then go, “Oh, I love that melody, but hit that note instead of this note because that go better.” Jeff’s the same. He goes, “I like this line better than this line.” It’s all in all the time. I come to Jeff when he’s ready and he’s home and it’s usually, I only have three days. Let’s see what we can bang out in three days, and we will do a 10-minute production in the room, in the control room, and I’ll go to the mic and we’ll do it from there. But we all hear what’s going to happen before that. We just have to get in there and sometimes on the fly we’ll go, “ha, that was always bugging me. Let’s do this instead.”
So, it’s great. Having Jeff there, we have a great relationship with each other, and then we don’t see each other at all until we shoot videos. By which point it’s usually too late to change anything else. But we’re pretty particular about, about everything that goes down and what comes out at the other end and how it sounds, and we don’t really discuss it that much. We have one conversation that “Yeah, of course. This is what it’s gonna sound like. Yeah, of course it has to sound like that”, but it’s not discussed. We intuitively just know and something come down the pike and we go, “let’s just take a look”, and we go, “Yeah, no”. So, we have that great place amongst each other that we know what we want to hear. It’s never a discussion. It’s not like, “I want this”, and he goes,” I want this.” It’s not like that at all. If I can go further Jeff and Reb and myself will usually finish everything. It’s all totally ass backwards. Then the drummer gets it. Drummer’s not on there first. The drummer gets it last. I mean, unheard of most of the time. Matt actually says he loves it. He loves it because now it’s on his desk and he goes,” I now actually have a chance to really listen to the format, and I can find all the places where I’m not in a room and we’re just banging it out.” You wanna put it down and it goes down. He goes, “This way I can hear it”. Matt has always said he loves playing off vocals and he loves playing off the melody and he loves adding, and I say, I love the thunder that Matt Star brings to the band. You can’t tell that we’re not all in there at the same time because that’s kind of how we work together.
On if he waits to hear the music before composing the lyrics – That’s exactly what happens. I wish I had a notebook. I might repeat myself sometimes because I go, “That sounds good with that”. Then someone will say, “You sang that in the last song with a different record” and I’m going, “Oh, I did?” So, I don’t keep notes, Jeff. I wait till I hear the music. I wait till I hear it and I think, and I don’t know why this is, but I think when we write the Black Swan music I think it’s quintessentially Black Swan. It sounds like it’s Black Swan. I don’t know how we do that, but it just does because it doesn’t sound like Winger. It doesn’t sound like Dokken. although people go, “Well, that riff is kind of like it”. Someone said to me earlier this track and this track kind of reminds me of a Klaus Meine, Scorpions and this thing, I don’t think, “let me see if I can sound like Klaus”. We’re almost like poking fun at each other and all that sort of stuff, but I like to think it’s us that’s on there. I like to think that it’s real. I like to think it’s not contrived as I think for a bunch of guys. I think we managed to bring a freshness to it. I hope I’m right in saying that. That’s what we try to do, and I think the production has a lot to do with that. We try to give it a little modern touch, not the same old, same old but we’re big on melodies, we’re big on hook lines, we’re big on all of that stuff. So that’s never going to go away. That’s just what we love to do.
On how he keeps his voice in shape – Oh, thank you. First of all, it’s the only thing I’ve got, so I really do take great care of, of my voice. I freak out at the least thing if somebody around me has a cold or is just coughing or sneezing. It just freaks me out. I’m like a complete, excuse my French, I’m a complete pain in the ass when it comes to that sort of stuff because then I can’t work. It’s not like picking a pair of drumsticks or bass or a guitar. You can have a snotty nose, and you can still go in there and you feel like crap, but you get the job done. There’s nothing really to hinder you because you’re plugging it in. Voice is a completely different animal. It brings you down. I’m the worst patient. My wife hates it when I’m sick, hates it. But I do probably what and the other singer does. I have little stuff. These things, I’m not promoting this because I just happen to have it. I use these vocal misters, lots of hydration. That’s kind of what I do. I typically don’t eat four hours before a session. I typically do very little talking until it’s time to get in and the red light’s on and it’s time to go. I keep it really very quiet. That’s just. My regime. It’s how disciplined I am when it comes to that.
It’s very difficult when you’re on the road, you are in a tour bus with a bunch of dudes, and everybody wants to talk or somebody’s gonna get sick, or they won’t tell you they’re sick until the whole bus is down. That sort of stuff, dealing with all those kind of elements, it’s a very boring job in my opinion. It’s a really awful job. So, I still fly with a mask too, because you’re in a tube and everybody’s coming at you. I don’t use AC, the AC is really bad. Who wants to pump antifreeze into the throat? All of those little things. So, lots of hydration. That’s really what I do. suppose I’m lucky. It seems to, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes I’ll walk up to the mic and go, “cough”.
I’ve just been recording all week, actually on completely different kind of material, something always up to something else. So I’ve been recording all week. But I have a blast doing it. I know I’m going to do it, and because I know I’m going to do it, I take all of the necessary precautions so that I’m recording today. This is what I have to do to make that happen and that’s what I do. I don’t stay up the night before, not get any sleep and hit the bottle. I mean, yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun, but there you have it.
On the band playing live – The band has actually never played. I played the Frontiers Rock Festivals. I will go back to Naples on the 26th of February, which is the day before the release for the 30th anniversary of the label. But there is something coming towards the end of the year, which is also a label celebration that Black Swan might actually step up and play some shows.
I think it would sound great. Winger’s off, off the map for the most part. Whitesnake’s off the map. Reb’s doing other stuff, but we just have to tie him down. Rehearsal is the thing. That’s going to be the big fun factor in, in getting Black Swan up on stage playing live because we want it to sound like it does on the record. We’ve all discussed that, it’s not something that we’re going to go, “Let’s get together and do a couple of tunes”. It’s not going to be like that. We will rehearse it and we will do it and we’ll do it right. We’re really looking forward to it because when we shot the video for “If I Was King” and “Paralyzed”, we discussed it quite lengthy. What rehearsals should look like and Reb’s funny, Reb goes, “What would we play?” And I go, just like you said, “Yeah. We have three records now”. I was on the Monsters of Rock tour with MSG last year and Winger was on there, and Reb comes up to me, goes, “Ah, dude. People are like in my ear going, will. Two people from Black Swan here, can we get a song outta you guys?” And he goes, “Well, if we did, what would we do?” I went, “What do you mean if we did, you know damn well that we won’t be doing it. You know, why you going down that rabbit hole?” And he goes, “No, no, you’re right. You’re right. You’re, it wouldn’t be right.” So. Yeah, we desperately would love to get out there and go, “we can actually do this”. So, fingers crossed Swan will hit the stage in 2026.
On upcoming plans outside of Black Swan – I will perform at the Frontiers Festival as a solo artist. I will also be solo artists performing at Sweden Rock this year. I just saw some stuff this morning coming in from the agency, trying to pack shows around that which would be solo again. It’s also the 40th anniversary of McCaulay Shanker and the promoters are going ape They’re going, “We need all the McAulay Shanker songs in set and when we go to see you play with Michael, there’s never a McAulay Shanker song in there”. Yeah. And I said, “Well, it’s not McAulay Schenker if it’s Michael Schenker”. That’s what’s up on stage right now. So, there’s been a huge amount of requests for that. Last year, 25, I spent about a month in the UK solo project, but one of the stipulations from the promoters was that we would embed a bunch of McAulay Shanker and even Grand Prix from 40 years ago that had never been performed. So, we did that. We played the UK, we played Spain, we played Germany, we played Sweden, and it was an absolute blast. Now they want more. But later in the year there will be more MSG stuff. We have Japan on the cards already. Michael’s still out doing his UFO 50th anniversary, but that will round the corner and then they’ll be into the next phase because there is a new MSG record, Don’t Sell Your Soul. I only have two tracks on there, but the record still needs to be promoted. So, that’s kind of what’s on the cards for shows.
People call (about playing in the US) and I’m going, “You know it’s great that you ask if the promoters were asking, then we can really, then we can really start to get, to get some stuff together”. But you know how the agency is going to go down that road very soon.
