Dennis Atlas is an incredibly talented musician with a bevy of famous friends. He combines his talent and his contacts on his upcoming solo record Principle. The music is an exciting mix of styles and features contributions from his band mates in Toto and a host of others. The record is officially released on May 15, but preorders are live and you can pick up a copy on the current Toto tour!
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with Dennis Atlas –
On if the songs are new or were written in the past – Yeah, actually all of the above a lot of these songs on this album were actually written while we were on the road in Europe in 2025. So, a lot of them started there and then, or the seeds of them started there just writing from the hotel room. Then when I got home, I finished them up and added all kinds of other cool parts and stuff like that. Then there are a few songs that had been lingering around for a little while and I’d had for a few years and thought that it would make a good match with what was going on here. So yeah, good combination of that.
On his lyrical inspiration – The inspiration is very personal and it’s different for every song, but when the seeds of songs start to arise, I like to ask the song, “What is this? What is this really about?” It’s like when you have a feeling come up, or if you have any jealousy or resentment or excitement come up in your life and you ask yourself, “What is this really about? What is what? What am I being led by here? What am I being fueled by?” That’s the same thing with the song. There’s some excitement. There’s something that causes that riff to come out in that way. I sat down at the guitar and went, “What does that mean? Where did that just come from? Just now? Why do I, why am I playing that?” Then especially if I hear certain words just pop into my mind.
One of those situations that a lot of songwriters describe where it’s like the song was just playing on the radio in my head. I thought, “What is trying to be said here?” So, there’s a different story for all of them. You mentioned “When The Monster Attacks”, and that was one where at first I was writing about someone else. I was looking out at the world and I was saying, “Look at how easily people are fooled into being, being told they need to be someone else or they need to do something to themselves in order to be happy when the happiness really comes from within”. Then when I’m listening back to the song, it’s really completely, it’s a mirror. It’s really completely autobiographical. I need to listen to the song for myself to figure out when I’m being fooled by that monster attacks all of us. So that was a personal a. Personal situation there, personal feeling that inspired that. I would say that a lot of the time. The meaning of the album name is that when I’m discovering all of this, I really like to ask myself, “What’s the principle of the matter here? What what’s really universal here in, in that concept?” Because again, I could be looking at someone else saying this is happening or that’s happening. Or I could look at myself and say I feel this way, but what’s the universal part of this? What part of this is always true and always operating on us as humans? That’s the part that I really like to write about.
On his musical inspiration – I like to not limit myself in terms of styles. What that means is you can’t go and write music and say, “I’m gonna put on my country hat now, and now I’m going to put on my metal hat”, because then it just sounds like you’re grasping at things and trying to be something that’s not really authentic. Where it really has to come from is when you’re listening to music and something may have rubbed you the wrong way the first time you listen to it and then you watch someone else enjoy it, and you think, “How come they could enjoy it? And I’m just gonna sit here and say, I don’t like it. What’s the joy in that?” So, I always challenge myself to just enjoy music for what it is and try to find that in all styles and try to find that in all artists and bands and think they’re coming to this from some authentic place somehow. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be resonating with people. So how can I relate and how can I understand?
So I always seek to understand that. Then what ends up happening is I end up falling in love with bands of all kinds of different styles, and I especially fall in love with bands that have wide pallets of styles like Toto. You’ve heard me talk about my favorite band Styx and Dream Theater, as you just mentioned, Falling Into Infinity is a great Dream Theater album. They’re very wide eclectic bands. Queen. These are the bands that I just grew up loving, and so I really just find that those styles just find their way through me and it just expresses some different part of what I’m experiencing. So that’s, I think that’s where it comes from. But it’s really just it’s almost I’m guessing that in hindsight, because music just comes from this place where it just speaks through you and if you wanna write music, it just happens. Not to say that there isn’t some degree of you have to sit down and make yourself do it. Then it’s once the faucet’s on, then it starts flowing. Sometimes you have to get the first idea out.
But yeah, it just comes from a place of wanting to express something and wanting to give people that feeling that music has always given me and think about how could I provide that feeling for someone else? What would be fun for someone to I would buy tickets to a concert and look forward to it. I still do buy tickets to a concert and look forward to it for months. That’s the one thing I just cannot wait for this thing to happen and cannot wait to be there for those two hours. I’m thinking, “What can I provide for people that would be that thing that would be worth waiting for months?” When you have a ticket. I wanna put that thing on stage, and then I’ll write it in the form of a song and get creative with it in the studio and add all kinds of different parts and fun things that are gonna give you that experience that when you’re listening in your headphones, you’re gonna enjoy it and you’re gonna have something to take away from it. It’s gonna make you think about something differently. There’s all kinds of different inspiration for writing music and it’s endless really.
On what it was like having the guys from Toto play his songs – It’s exactly that, what you just described there. That was the feeling. It was like, wow, I walked into this band of guys who’ve been doing this for 50 years, 40 years longer than I’ve been doing this. I walked into it going, “There’s really no need for me to have an opinion on anything. I think they’ve got this under control”, and then they are being supportive of me making my own music and then wanting to play on it. I have these guys at my disposal for playing my songs now. This is crazy. This is it. It was such a surreal feeling. So yeah, sitting there in the room with those guys. I’ll never forget sitting there in the room with Luke (Steve Lukather), because he’s tracking the solo on my song and it’s, “What do you want me to play here?” It’s I’m, “whoa”. It’s kinda flip the script real quick. Okay. But it was cool. They loved doing that and they were so supportive of it.
Shannon (Forrest), when he latches onto what the song is about, he puts that feel in the foundation, in the groove of the song. So, that’s why these guys were the top and are the top session musicians that everybody goes to is because they don’t just play the part, they really get into it and put themselves into it and add to the song. So, I feel like it really is everyone’s contributions that make the record what it is.
On Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal being involved with the record – Man, when I asked him to do that solo on on “Games”, and he is one of those guys. He understands the assignment. He got that song, and he is, “I know exactly what this needs”. I just, I imagine that’s what he thought, because when he laid down that solo, it was just, that was exactly what the song was calling for, and it’s singable, it’s fun. But it’s also flashy as heck as it is just it really takes that song to another level.
He actually mastered the album. The album was mixed by Trev Lukather. So, Trev did the mixing which added a lot to the album and then Bumblefoot, his masters, I just trusted that he was gonna know how this had to sound because his album sounds so fantastic and he mixed and mastered that. So yeah, that, that combo of having it mixed by Trev and mastered by Bumblefoot really just makes it sound, it’s unique. There’s something about it.
On how he landed in Toto – Actually it was Bumblefoot who recommended me to them. Thank you, Ron. Ron sent me a text out of the blue one day that said, “Hey, do you know a lot of Toto songs?” I had done some cover gigs with Ron with a band. Then also he and I did a gig on our own. I wasn’t sure if he just wanted to play more Toto songs or something like that. He said, “I just referred you to them. They’re looking for someone.” So, I was just blown away and a two days later I was on the phone with Luke and I had the gig. I look at it like this, if you show up if you show up over and over again, prepared, and you love to do this thing. I could at least speak as far as music goes, but I’m assuming it’s a similar situation in all industries. If you love to do what you do and you try to be the best at it that you can be, and you show up over and over again and you’re a cool person and you have your priorities straight, and you realize that this is really about people wanting to hang with you more than it is about anything else. Your ability to get the job done is really only services that, it services this ability for us to hang out and have fun together. Because if I show up and I don’t have my part ready or I can’t play it, I’m not good enough to play that part. We can’t keep doing what we’re doing.
So, this is really about us getting together and enjoying each other’s company and enjoying performing this music for the audience. That’s the perspective that I like to keep on it. This is about getting together and having a good time and all of the technical all of the technique is the technique to be able to do that. There’s no balance of technique and fun. It’s like the technique is your technique to have fun. That’s what music is to me. So, I’ve always had that that, that kind of way of thinking about it and that perspective. I think keeping that consistently is ultimately what landed me this gig. If I’m gonna take a stab at what I think happened. But also, you’d have to tell me from the outside, but that’s, to me that’s my experience in the whole thing.
On his previous bands, including Pattern-Seeking Animals – Yeah, those guys in Pattern-Seeking, those guys are awesome. I learned a lot playing with those guys too. Playing live, I didn’t play on their albums, but I played in their shows. That was an excellent experience. We played on Cruise to the Edge which was a blast. I also played in a cover band that I was just mentioning with the drummer of Pattern-Seeking Animals, Jimmy Keegan. Man, that cover band was, they were on another level. Those guys, I learned so much playing with them and the previous drummer who was in that band too, Mike Lewis and Bumblefoot was guesting with us, so that was a great thing to be involved in.
I was in a bunch of tribute bands, some of which were of my own creation, if you can call it that, with the tribute band, but a band that I put together, like Styxology was my Styx tribute band. We had a lot of fun doing that. I still miss it to this day, even though there’s just no time. There’s only so much time in the day to work on so many things. So, I learned a lot playing in those situations. The way I think about it is if you could get into those songs, and I actually had the privilege of playing in those cover bands and tribute bands in front of thousands of people. We had really good gigs in some of those bands. The band Arch Allies that I played and it was a really successful tribute band that did Queen, Journey, REO, Boston, Def Leppard all in one show. Wen you play those songs in front of 5,000 people and you see the way they react, You can’t help but learn from those compositions and see what actually, what works, connects with people. When I played in all of those bands, I had a friend who told me, “You’ve learned just by playing those songs in front of people, you will carry that with you your whole life as a writer.” It’s so true.
You don’t even have to try and when next time you go and write a song, it’s like you have everything that you’ve put into your fingers and into your mind and into your consciousness there. Even songs that you originally didn’t like. You think in that cover band we were playing all songs that I grew up loving, no, we played some songs that I probably hated when I was a kid or something. But once we start playing them, you fall in love with it and you realize, oh, this, it’s what I was saying before, you’ve. You fall in love with where this song is coming from and why it connects to people. All of those things played into it. But yeah, a lot of cover bands, tribute bands. I also had my own band Initiator years ago that we put out an album and again, major learning experience and we made a really cool album. So that, there you go. There’s some of my past, some of my history there.
On if he plans on touring to support Principle – Oh, absolutely. That is the entire idea, and that’s just another one of those really incredible, lucky things. Not only is the band so supportive of me and my whole creativity as a musician and as an artist, and they wanna support it and be a part of it, it also just turns out that Toto’s touring schedule is perfect for that because it’s just enough to where we could stay busy with Toto. But it’s not so much like some of these other touring acts where it’s not it’s not like we’re doing 150 shows a year or something like that where there’s no time for anything else in between. We go out for a few months and then we have our time at home to recharge and do whatever else we want to do. Then a month or two later, then we go back out and that makes a perfect balance for me. So, I already have some guys coming over to my studio and we’re jamming out some of these songs and we’re working on it so that when that opportunity arises, absolutely we want to get out and play these songs live.
