A Conversation With Blues Traveler’s Chan Kinchla – HuffPost 6.27.12

Mike Ragogna: Let’s just dive into this interview, shall we?

Chan Kinchla: We certainly shall!

MR: Indeed, we shall! Let’s chat about your new album, Suzie Cracks The Whip. Now, I’ve kind of read what this is about, but could you tell our listeners the story behind the title of the album?

CK: Well, like all great titles we like, it has to be kind of evocative of what could be a bunch of things. It’s nice if it’s evocative of different things to different people, but our inspiration actually was something kind of funny. When we were in the studio, we were recording here in Los Angeles at Killingsworth Studios, and there was this twenty-year-old girl, this cute little blonde from Wichita, Kansas. She had just moved out to L.A. She wanted to be in the music business. Great singer, great player, but she was also working in the studio, and she was really good at running the computer, running the boards. She was just a little badass! So we just got such a kick out of her, but she was really sweet. So then we did a photo shoot, and for some reason, John had a whip because John has all kinds of weird things. During the photo shoot, John was cracking the whip, and we recorded it for the record. And then we had her whipping it, and, of course, once you have a pretty twenty-year-old blonde girl with a whip and you have a photographer, you’re going to have her whipping you! So she started kind of just fake whipping us, so then the catch phrase of the whole album, when she would ask us quite nicely to do something, we would be like, “Whoa, Suzie cracks the whip!” So it’s just kind of one of those things that became kind of one of the inside little jokes through the whole session. You live on top of each other for a couple months, and those things come up. But we kind of liked it because it’s evocative of a lot of things. It seems like there’s a story behind it. You know, cracking the whip is an age-old phrase. We liked a lot of those aspects of it, and it had something to do with the record, so it seemed to just make itself the title.

MR: Now, speaking of cracking the whip, you had the production team of Sam Hollander and Dave “Sluggo” Katz, so did Sam and Sluggo crack the whip at all?

CK: They were incredible, Sam and Dave, as well, but Sam is kind of the vibe master. He’s not so much of a whip cracker as kind of setting the table, getting everyone really comfortable, having a really relaxed atmosphere, and knowing what’s important to focus on. So he was actually more of like a Zen master than a whip cracker. What I loved about him is that he got John very comfortable, and John sang so relaxed. You can really hear it. During the whole record, making the record, we were having a lot of fun in really a very creative, very fun space. The music came out sounding really relaxed like the musicians were having fun.

MR: Yeah, it’s probably my personal favorite since Four, but that’s just me.

CK: Oh, well that’s terrific! I agree with you. It’s my personal favorite since Four as well because one of the nice things is that we had so much good material to work with. I guess I’ll just jump ahead question-wise, but the year previous, we went down to Austin, which is kind of our second home in Texas, and we stayed down at this ranch outside of Austin and just woodshedded a whole bunch of songs. But what’s different is that it seems like with every record, we’re good for like five or six good songs, and then there’s like four or five filler songs, so we were working on our songs, but we brought in a bunch of different great songwriters from the Austin area and from all over, really, and worked up a couple songs with each of them. Or we’d handle the music, and they’d put lyrics to it or vice versa. But we came out of there with about thirty songs, and so we had a lot of really good melodies and great lyrics and great ideas coming out of that. So when we were in the studio, we were able to just have fun and pick the best stuff. We weren’t under the stress of coming up with something. Sometimes the studio can be a slog, and sometimes you can’t just turn on great creativity. So having had that great session in Austin and having all that material to start with really opened up our ability to be able to just have fun sonically and just picking the best parts.

MR: Yeah, and you said you had some people that joined you in the songwriting process. I’m seeing Ron Sexsmith on the credits.

CK: He was one of them as well.

MR: That’s pretty impressive.

CK: He’s terrific. What a prodigious songwriter. There were a few songs of his that we worked on, and then what really seemed to work best is music we had already kind of come up with and he would write lyrics and help us kind of build those up. He’s got a great sense of melody, but the nice thing is that it’s a simple sense of melody, kind of like Steve Miller or something like that. Steve Miller is very melodic, but anyone feels like they can sing it, so he was really helpful, I think, in fleshing out a bunch of songs that were terrific.

MR: Yeah. you have a guest vocalist on “I Don’t Wanna Go,” a certain American Idol, Season 9 finalist, Crystal Bowersox, right?

CK: Crystal Bowersox is my favorite American Idol contestant ever! She’s been coming to Blues Traveler shows for years, so we’ve been friends with her. That song was actually written in its entirety by this woman, Carrie…I’m blanking on the name.

MR: Carrie Rodriguez, maybe just a little?

CK: Yes, Carrie Rodriguez, exactly, who’s terrific. We wrote a bunch of songs with her. And there are a lot of songs we wrote, actually, to digress for a minute, that didn’t make the album, and we have really good demos of. So pretty much, all of these, we’ll be releasing either as bonus tracks, or we’ll put up some of the rougher ones on our website. Luckily, it’s so easy to record some decent quality today that we got some really good demos. In any case, her having written it, once we picked the song, we always heard a woman’s voice on there because that’s how we originally heard it, so our good friend Jono Manson happened to be recording on Bowersox’s new record right at the time, so it all kind of fell together, but that song came out great. Her and John’s voices blended really nicely.

MR: Plus you had your old pal, Spin Doctors’ Chris Barron is on there.

CK: Yeah, well Chris is our dear friend. We went to high school with Chris in Princeton before there was ever really a Blues Traveler. Chris was actually in Blues Traveler for like a month before we realized that we could only have one lead singer ego in the band, and we lived together. Chris is a dear friend, and the Spin Doctors, with us, kind of conquered New York together playing all these little bars, and then we got lucky, and good stuff happened. So it was great to have him come down, and we also got a good couple rounds of golf in too.

MR: (laughs) So Chan, how do you feel about twenty-five years with Blues Traveler? It’s your anniversary this year.

CK: It’s amazing! Well, it’s a good thing we started when we were ten years old, but it’s really cool, and at the same time, scary because any time you can put century after the length of time, as in quarter century, it can give one pause. To be honest, the time has flown by for the most part, and I’m looking forward to another quarter century. Let’s make it to the half-century mark!

MR: And there’s “Recognize My Friend”?

CK: We all had a hand in writing it. That was Brendan Hill, our drummer’s song, and he came in, and you know certain songs are more thought out when they come in, and certain songs are more just like a cool little idea, and we work it up. That song is very simple even now, as far as chords and everything, so that was a very basic idea that Brendan brought in, and then so musically we kind of got that groove. Then John and Sexsmith worked up the melody and lyrics. But what were you going to ask specifically about that song?

MR: Well, I just love the sentiment of that song.

CK: It’s beautiful. Once we got into it, we kind of thought of it… You know that song “Closing Time”? It kind of is one of those anthems to a friend, very much like that. It’s a very cool sentiment.

MR: Yeah. Now the Kinchlas have a heavy hand in “All Things Are Possible.”

CK: Yes, “All Things Are Possible.” That song originally was kind of like a New Orleans funk thing, and it’s kind of got a poignant sensibility to it, and it was kind of fun in the verse to have that more dreamy, poignant side, and then BOOM, jump into something that feels good. So that was the cool rub with that song, having that reggae to jump into really worked for me.

MR: Yeah, and then also “Things Are Looking Up,” where a certain Tad Kinchla appears as a writer.

CK: That’s a great album kind of rock track, but I think I could put that as one of my favorites on the record. I just think it’s got a really cool kind of modern vibe but still very Blues Traveler. It’s going to be great live.

MR: What are you predicting for this album?

CK: You know, in this record market, it’s just so hard to try and do predictions or anything. I’m just very excited to play the stuff live. I think it’s a record our fans are really going to like, and that’s important to us. We just wanted to make something that was fun and fans could get into. We wanted to have a record where we played a lot of the songs live. This one, we’ve already started trying them out live, and they feel great, so that’s I think why I’m excited. I’m really looking forward to just getting them in the mix and having fun this summer.

MR: So there will be some touring, of course, to support the album.

CK: Yeah, we have a whole bunch of stuff coming up. We’re doing tours with the Barenaked Ladies and all summer, all over the country, with Cracker, Big Head Todd, us and Barenaked Ladies. It’s kind of like your “Favorite Bands From the ’90s That Still Rock” Tour. All really good, musical bands, and actually, bands that we’ve all played with and are friends with, so that’s all over the country in July and August. Then this Fall it’s just Blues Traveler really hardcore doing big theater stuff in all the major markets, and then we’ll take it from there, starting on the 4th of July for our twentieth annual 4th of July Red Rocks.

MR: Nice. I asked John (Popper) this, now it’s your turn. What is your advice for new artists?

CK: Well, I think the most important thing to do is to get good and to get something going. You’ve got to find yourself a place you can play out on a regular basis that kind of becomes your home, your woodshedding home, so you can go out a couple times a month. With us, we played several places in New York City. We’d play Mondays at Nightingale, Tuesdays at another place, Wednesdays another venue, Thursdays at Wetlands, almost every week. It started out in one place. We played Nightingale every Monday night. What happens is, you sit in a studio forever practicing, but once you get it out onstage and you make it a regular thing, you get better, and then you start building a crowd. It becomes a social thing. People want to come down, and your friends come down, and it becomes your fun, cool thing to do. Then once you get that built in and going, all of a sudden, you’ve got something. Then you can get other gigs. But at the same time, you’re really making yourself better because until you play stuff out live and you start getting a crowd, you’re hamstrung.

MR: One last thing. What’s you’re favorite tune from the album?

CK: Well, we’ve already been playing “You Don’t Have To Love Me,” which actually goes over great. Any time you can clap along, that rocks. But I really think the song “Things Are Looking Up” is the one that I think is going to be a real live Blues Traveler class. It’s got a lot of different parts, and it’s got that openness that’s going to turn into a good live behemoth.

MR: Things certainly are looking up for Blues Traveler and your new album, Suzie Cracks The Whip. Oooh.

CK: That excites you.

MR: It excites you guys too.

CK: It does.

MR: I think it’s a guy thing.

CK: Exactly.

MR: Any parting words of wisdom, sir?

CK: I would just say let’s go out and have some good fun this summer! I think things are looking up all over.

MR: Nice. Thank you so much.

CK: No problem, brother! It’s a pleasure talking to you, and I hope I see you soon this summer!

Transcribed by Kyle Pongan