Preview of the interview
in the upcoming issue of
Sweden Rock magazine

TRANSCRIPT

Thanks for a second “solo” album ­ another great piece of majestic AOR!  There are only too few CD’s of this caliber . . .

Thanks for the good words on the music Ola, it was great fun to make the record, I’m glad you like it.

I’d say your background as a classical piano player brings a fantastic flavour to the AOR  music on your CD’s. Tell me how you write your songs; are you sort of planning the vocal melodies and chords to make them consist of both rock and classic ingredients?

It usually starts with melodies and chord progressions swimming around in thoughts during the day. It's hard to tell where they come from, but that’s not as important as what's done with the basic ingredients like melodies, rhythms, and harmonies once they start forming inside your head.  For the album Voyage, I wasn’t thinking about formal structures when I wrote the songs and lucky I wasn’t, 'cause it seems that both classical and rock writing styles mixed together in the music, and lyrics. Also, the meaning of the stories behind the songs ended up driving the whole process.

Do you start with writing the music parts and then adding lyrics, or can it also be the other way around?

For the songs on this album, the lyrics, melodies and the main parts of the music seemed to come together at the moment of inception. That is, when I first felt I had a song started, these parts were realized together in the first threads of ideas for each song.  From there, the lyrics set the path for the melodic and harmonic choices.  So the last elements to come on the scene in many cases were the musical pieces in the out sections of many of the songs.

Somewhere I read that you studied classical music in Wiesbaden, Germany. So,were you living in Germany originally or did you go there simply for the studies?

My family was living there when I was young and was fortunate to study music under a great pianist, but the main reason we were there was because my father was stationed there in and working in the U.S. Air Force.  Overall, it was a great time for me and set the course for my desire to play and write music.

For being an AOR writer/player I’d say your lyrics are amazing. When and how do you write your lyrics? Have you ever thought about writing poems and such?

Thanks again, it means a lot to hear you say that.  Each word and phrase is exactly the way I want it to create the feeling and story lines for each of the songs on Voyage.  I write tons of thoughts down in notebooks that are strewn all over the place in my house, the studio, in my pockets.  But I’m not sure if I would say that any of this writing is poetry in the formative sense, maybe some of it could be, but that's not the way I think of it.  The reason I do it is because a great way to get thoughts down and a way to have a conversation with yourself, if you know what I mean.  It’s amazing once you start writing your thoughts down, it moves you to go inside your feelings and helps you to understand what you think about the world.  And as a writer yourself, you know you can surprise yourself every day doing this! And the great side effect when you do this is that these words begin to attached themselves to music ideas that come along.

How important is your rock career compared to what you are doing for a living (the classical playing)?

Currently, I write as often as possible in that genre and will continue to play and write it and rock music for the rest of my life.  But currently, I’m not making my living from classical music performance.  Both are equally fun to do and it seems more and more that rock writing has become my favorite mode of expression.  After Voyage, I think that from here out I’ll be primarily writing rock music and bringing in the orchestral and piano side of things more into what I’m doing along these lines.

What were your thoughts after the “Wind it up” CD, when planning and writing for the BMP “Voyage” recordings? Was there anything you wanted to change or add (or take away)?

Because “Wind It Up” was mostly songs I had written the 1990’s (and a few new ones that followed the same style), I really didn’t want to do the same thing again after that.  I want to change many things, a good example of this is the approach to songwriting and the instrument selections.  For Voyage, I didn't want to let any preconceived ideas about structure get in the way.  For example, if I felt the song needed and extra section or if a section needed an odd bar or two to support the lyric, I let it happen.  And after doing this, there’s no going back, because this approach creates much more interesting music to listen to.

Any special favourite songs from this new CD? Mine are definitely ‘Voyage’ and ‘Patriot Dreams’. The last one is the best song of 2003 so far.

So cool you say that.  ‘Patriot Dreams’ was such a personal song at one point I was thinking of pulling it from the album.  But it was that intimate look at the emotions around this subject that made it special to me and now many listeners are writing to say the song has touched them as well.  And the song ‘Voyage’ was another one I wasn’t sure of at first – it was written so quickly after I woke from a dream one night and I had put it on the shelf for many, many months.  When Magnus Söderkvist (A&R, Atenzia) heard the song in its early form in a very rough song version I sent him, he really thought it was a special one even through the scratch vocal performance and minimal production.  Both of these songs turned out well I’m glad they’re on the album.  For my favorite songs I like 'Patriot Dreams', 'Where You Are, Where I Am', and 'In the Shadows of Angels'.

I know you have also been writing some classical music before, maybe  you still do. Will you strive to record and release any of these works on CD?

I've been writing pieces off and on for a long time and have been considering the idea of recording some of these for piano and piano and chamber orchestra setting.  In the meantime, I’ll be sneaking a few of these ideas onto the songs for the next rock album.

Also knowing that you have written tons of songs for the last 2 CD’s (Wind it Up, Voyage), it seems you are writing songs all the time!

Yes, for 29 or so songs that landed on the last two CDs (this includes the bonus tracks that are on the Japanese releases for Voyage and Wind It Up), I seem to have written and recorded at least twice as many as that during this time period and many more things that have not yet been tracked.  So there are at least a few dozen others that didn’t make it on these albums.  I love to write, its that part of it that is addicting beyond even releasing albums for people to listen to. And the initial spark of an idea and how it’s conveyed into a new song is an awesome feeling that always surprises me and keeps reminding me how exciting music can be each day.

A natural “meeting in the middle” for classical music and melodic rock would be a rock opera or a modern musical in the veins of Chess or something like that. Have you ever thought of doing something like this?

At one point last year I was looking at collaborating with other artists on doing something like this, but was unable to find any “partners in crime” that I really wanted to work with.  I’m still looking and always looking for high caliber collaboration opportunities . . .

Especially in your ballads I can trace influences or similarities with the Canadian wizard David Foster. Have you listened to his own music and his productions? (This is absolutely not a complaint. Foster is one of the greatest for collectors of soft AOR and ‘Westcoast’ pop).

I think the ballad “The Night You Said Goodbye” (the only older song on Voyage) has this flavor and is definitely a nod in that direction. I think that David Foster and the songwriters in Chicago cut the path for how to write a rock ballad in the 1970's, also true for the following decades and
there are so many people today still using that format to create ballads. There is a lot owed to the originators of this style inspirationally.  As for the other ballad on Voyage, “Between Heaven and Heart”, I feel I stepped away from this format.  But for “The Night You Said Goodbye”, it’s clear that these influences and similarities you've mentioned are there in a big way.

You are playing most instruments and you are also a producer and songwriter. Is there any of these parts that you originally planned to let anyone else do?

You’re looking inside my thoughts - I haven't been asked this question yet. I always start out thinking of collaboration possibilities and who I need to bring in.  At the same time, it seems that when I get an idea going, I want to play that idea through myself in the studio by before bringing in another player.  And for most of the parts I want them performed in a particular
way, so in many cases I end up learning the part and performing it on the track myself.  But for lead guitars on some of the tracks, and for strings, brass, and instruments like bagpipes on the song ‘Unfinished Bridges”, I follow through with the plan to bring in players.  I have to admit here that playing new parts to a new song in the studio is almost as addicting as writing songs.  So usually only the special parts where what’s in my head has to be played by certain players with expertise outside of what I can do – these are where you will see someone like Reb Beach on guitars, string or brass players listed on the track credits.

About the sound (the production); did you have any favourite producers or favourite albums sounds that you tried to find on your own CD’s? Or have you sort of created your own sound?

For Voyage, before I started writing the songs, I was in the mood to listen to rock from the 1960’s and ‘70’s so much and I really wanted to lock in on what made my favorite songs written in those days so great.  So while I wasn ’t really trying to capture a specific producer’s style on this album, in general, I was listening to how producers like George Martin (Beatles) and other extremely talented producers chose or recommended instruments and made other production choices for songs I think are great.  Like you, I’m always interested in listening to what others have to say about the production, and as you will probably agree, every time we listen to a favorite song it’s more than just pleasure to listen to (which is why we love what music does to us) but also, this is a chance to understand what’s happening behind the music.

You seem to have picked up a pace to bring us new CD’s with only 3-4 years intervals. So are you already thinking of doing a 3rd one?

I’m definitely thinking along those lines and have started writing songs already for it – it’s exciting because I’m not sure what’s coming next exactly, it'll be a new voyage I guess you could say,  one that take the styles on this latest album and the new concepts I’m working with now to the next step.

Interview transcript to be continued . . .

The above transcription is a preview from the upcoming Sweden Rock Magazine article/interview with Brian McDonald.