They say good things come to those who wait. Jeff LaBar of Cinderella may just be the most patient person on this planet. There are some things in life that you just don’t rush and that includes making your debut solo album. Cinderella formed back in 1983 and LaBar has finally released his solo effort entitled One For The Road and, I have to say, it’s been well worth the wait. I recently caught up with LaBar and we sat down during a break in women’s tennis to talk about his new album.
Jeff LaBar: Hey Johnny, sorry I’m a little late. I got tied up texting and emailing and then I was on the phone with my record label and I thought to myself, holy shit I have an interview to do!
No worries my friend; this is a mixture of business and pleasure for me. I’ve been looking forward to this talk for some time now.
Ok, cool, that’s great. Well, let’s do this then.
Well, the first question that a lot of people are wondering is why a solo album now after all this time? Was there a catalyst for it, did you have an epiphany or what?
Well, I have been threatening my wife, my manager, and the guys in Cinderella, especially Fred Coury, for a while now. I got called out by my wife and manager when Tom (Keifer) put out his solo album; they both told me that now was the time. I don’t know if I get lazy or complacent or what; oh Cinderella is touring so I’ll wait, blah, blah, blah. Our tour manager told me that since Cinderella wasn’t going to be working that the time was now and that’s what prompted it. Plus, he knew a company called Rat Pak Records that would sign me in a second. I told him, “whoa cowboy! Slow down there!” Let me throw down a couple of songs on my own first because I don’t want to owe anybody a thing. I’ve been singing as long as I have been playing guitar and I wanted to make this a true solo record. I’m not as good of a drummer as I’d like to have on one of my records, so I enlisted Troy Luccketta from Tesla, as well as Fred (Coury) for mixing, and I threw down three songs in a month or two and I signed with Rat Pak. Then, Joe O’Brien with Rat Pak decided that he wanted five more songs and I gave them to him. Then he said, “How about two more? Let’s do seven.” I thought, “Oh ok, so basically half a record?” Well, with the short attention span theater that a lot of music fans have these days have, a lot of bands and pop artists are releasing just one song to iTunes or releasing EPs. I told him that we’ll put out seven on an EP and see how they like it and if they do, we’ll give them seven more and call it side b.
You’ve been on stages all around the world and have rocked millions of people, but how did it feel to front this new project?
Well, I have anxieties and insecurities just like any other artist. I haven’t actually fronted anything just yet. I went into the studio and recorded myself, which I have been doing for years. The only difference was that these were my songs that I wrote and I was singing lead. I’ve yet to do this live, but I am looking forward to it.
Jeff LaBar – “No Strings” (Official Video)
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So, have there been talks about taking this out on the road? Do you have a band lined up?
I really didn’t think about it until I started to do these interviews to promote the record and interviewers, like yourself, made me start thinking about it. My son Sebastian plays guitar in a great band called Mach 22 and he’s also the guitar player in my video. There are some other great artists and musicians in that video including Jasmine Cain, who is an incredible singer/songwriter/bassist in her own right and tours all the time. Matt Arnn is on drums and he plays in the best rockabilly band in the land called Hillbilly Casino. If I could get those guys away from their day jobs, actually their night jobs, it would be great. If not, then there’s a pool of musicians in Nashville to choose from.
Speaking of Nashville, that town definitely isn’t the country music town that many people think it is.
I moved here in 2004 to work with Eric Brittingham’s wife’s band and I didn’t actually move; I just came here to help and I stayed for three years (laughs). In that time, I met my wife and we got married. She was from Iowa and I’m from Philly and we looked at each other and thought, oh well, I guess we live here now. When I did move here, I moved right across the street from Paul Taylor, who is the keyboardist and guitar player from Winger, Kip (Winger) lived just down the street and Mark Slaughter lived down the other way. So basically, it’s become the new LA. Also, just down the street, there’s a place called Music Row and it’s all studios, labels, publishing companies and down the other direction is Gibson, Pearl Drums, Kramer Guitars and more.
Man, that’s one hell of a neighborhood!
(Laughs) Well, I use the term neighborhood very loosely. I live in a suburb just ten to fifteen minutes outside of Nashville and a lot of those companies are in neighboring suburbs.
There’s a nice tip of the hat to one of your guitar heroes on this album entitled “Ode to Page.” What can you tell us about that one?
Well, there are a couple of short, acoustic instrumentals on there; one is an interlude intro to my ballad “Hello or Goodbye.” I wrote “Ode to Page” a long time ago, but I never had a title for it. When I was just a little kid, I learned to play guitar by listening to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. I couldn’t figure out how to play Zeppelin tunes and they seemed impossible unless I had nine fingers. I finally got a complete Zeppelin songbook and I learned that Page tuned down his guitar differently. So, I figured out his tuning along with being inspired by some of the drugs of the 70s and I started writing things.
So much in the industry has changed those early beginnings. What are your thoughts on the state of the music industry today?
How much time do you have (laughs)? You know what? Again, it’s what I call the short attention span theater. The mentality is “Give me one song, just one great song and I’ll buy it, I’ll download it and I don’t even need a package for it”. If you want to be a pop star and you have a decent voice, you can put it on YouTube and you’ll get a record deal. You can get a deal even if you’re not that good, but the song is pretty good. It’s so different than back in the day when we had to write 50 songs just to get management. You had to get a manager to shop you a record deal and back then there were maybe seven major labels and it wasn’t easy to get a deal with one of them. Nowadays, because of social media, if you’ve got the goods and you throw it on YouTube, you can be a popstar for at least fifteen minutes. Yes, I do follow pop music and I see what Miley and Justin Bieber are doing or not doing lately. Taylor Swift is a perfect example of how to work the music business these days or how to make the music biz work for you.
It seems that artists, for lack of better terms, from your era, seem to be gravitating towards Rat Pak Records.
I went with them because they have a track record with my kind of music. People our age are the only ones who really care about the packaging. We like the lyrics, the inserts and the liner notes. Cinderella doesn’t make records anymore because bands from our era, Ratt, Skid Row, Tesla, still make records, but does anyone know? They’re lucky if they sell 15,000 copies when back in the day they were selling millions. Rat Pak has a reputation of being very hands on. They set-up all of my interviews, they work the radio and they do what labels used to do back in the day, but on a smaller scale. Rat Pak cares about the artist and the product. They put together all of these really cool bundle packages with t-shirts, guitar picks and other stuff. I sat the other day and signed 500 CD booklets for people who had pre-ordered the new album.
I’ve seen Rat Pak offer some pretty amazing bundles on their other artists as well. I think they’re awesome with what they do. Jeff, I know we need to be wrapping this up, but I have just a couple of more questions for you if you’re game?
Sure, let’s hear them?
If you could go back and give the younger version of yourself some advice, would you and what would it be?
Oh my god, yeah, I’d give myself an earful! I’m 50 now, so if I could talk to myself at 25, holy crap! Oh, I would definitely have a lot to say. First off, I would tell myself to stop snorting coke, participate in my marriage and stuff like that. I did all of the cliché dumb things as most young rockstars, it just wasn’t reported in the news; I did all of that dumb shit. I’d tell myself to put down the straw, cherish my family more and wise the fuck up. Oh yeah, save your money and hide it from your wife because she’s hiding it from you as well (laughs).
Do you have any guilty pleasures that would surprise even your most hardcore fan?
What makes it guilty?
Well, that can differ I guess. You know, something like you binge watch an entire season of Orange is the New Black.
Oh my god, I love that show! If you’re talking stuff like that, then I could go on for days. I wake up each morning and I watch Good Morning America, then I have to watch Kelly and Michael and after that The View. From there, I have to go to ESPN because I feel there’s not enough testosterone going on. I think my biggest guilty pleasure would be women’s tennis; it’s on right now.
Oh I see now, that’s really the reason that you were late calling (laughs).
Women’s tennis is fucking awesome!
