A Conversation with Stephen Kellogg – HuffPost 10.28.11

Mike Ragogna: Are you there, Stephen?

Stephen Kellogg: Yeah, how you doing?

MR: I’m great. The album is titled Gift Horse, like the old saying “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” kind of saying don’t take for granted what you’ve got.

SK: Absolutely.

MR: What inspired this collection of songs?

SK: This isn’t our first time around the rodeo. I think we just have a real strong sense about the appreciation that we have a job, that we’ve been able to make rock ‘n’ roll we love for the last eight years together. I have a growing family, growing faster then I could ever imagine. I have three daughters and I feel immensely lucky that they’re in my life. It’s just a general sense of appreciation. Things don’t turn out exactly how you think they will, but they’ve been pretty great.

MR: In “Gravity,” your mother is saying, “Soon you will move up, you’re a fighter, I know. You turn it around and you say, “I love it right here with my feet on the ground.”

SK: I thought it would be fun to embrace gravity. I love the John Mayer song “Gravity,” I think it’s an amazing tune. When we started writing, I started thinking about it from the opposite point of view. Instead of feeling, Don’t blunt my star and keep me down,” I thought, “There’s no place I would rather be than grounded with a foot firmly in reality.” I love being down to earth.

MR: You have many songs on this song that are not only down to earth but very revealing. We learn a lot about you and your family on this album.

SK: I know, I hope it’s not overkill. If I had one fear, I could not stop myself on this record from writing about family. It’s a theme that’s massive for me right now. I know I will go on to write other things, every aspect of family and extended family is just where my head’s at right now.

MR: It’s beautiful and you articulate it well on these tracks. For instance, “Roots And Wings” is probably my favorite song on the album. I love how you start it out where you get caught in a lie by your dad, and he shakes his head and the point of it all is that one day, you’ll know what it’s like to give your children roots and wings. Also, when you get your roots and wings, never fear the change that it brings.

SK: Yeah, all of that stuff. I happen to have these memories of my parents teaching me lessons that really stayed with me. I had never heard the term before, but I was having dinner with my manager one night, and his mom mentioned roots and wings. I said, “What’s that?” And she explained it to me and I thought that was the greatest concept ever.

MR: In this song, I like how your father wants you to tell the truth and be a man and always do the best you can. I think truth is definitely on the laundry list of things that makes one a great person. How do you feel about that?

SK: I agree with you. The older I get, the more I realize you gotta try to sit down and have integrity and be a good person, and that’s all that matters here. It’s not a bank statement, it’s not a list of achievements people are going to remember you by. They will remember you by the way that you were. It’s a good, healthy thing to shift and to focus on. It’s been a much more fulfilling last couple of years than the angst and panicked first years. My twenties were crazy and once I turned thirty, things did start to shift.

MR: That must be the way it works, because the teens and twenties? That’s hard stuff. It’s all exploration and everything you could possibly think of.

SK: I felt that way. I know some people in their twenties who seem to just be grabbing life and making so much of it. So, certainly, there are plenty of exceptions, but for me, that was the case, no doubt.

MR: Let’s move on to “We Belong Here,” another reference to your roots.

SK: Yeah, I always had this feeling in high school that people didn’t like me. You go back and you look at the facts, and I was actually the president of my class. I had this feeling that nobody really liked me, if they were being honest or something. I just think that must be really telling, many people don’t have the exciting fortune of being the president of the class, which should be some affirmation of being alright, so I thought if I didn’t feel like I belonged, I figured it had to be to some degree that it’s true for everybody, that they have this sense of wanting to belong, and do you belong? Do you fit in? And what do people really think? I wanted to make a positive song with that one, that would just tell people that you do belong, and we all do. We are all put where it counts, and we’re all on the same team and a part of the human race. That really does give us more similarities than differences.

MR: Well, building on the theme of “My Favorite Place,” home is wherever you are.

SK: I appreciate that you delved into the lyrics. When you travel as much as you do, you learn to fall in love just about anywhere. The condition of your heart really has more to do with your home than anything, than any physical place.

MR: Nicely said. So, Stephen Kellogg & The Sixers has been around for a while, and you’ve have had quite a few albums released. What is life like with your entourage, because that’s your other family.

SK: They really are. I have had years where I’ve probably logged as many or more hours with these guys than anybody else. The team has never been better, we’ve all really found a way of appreciating each other. If there was some semblance of some way you could talk to your whole family and say, “Here’s the rules, we’re going to be a family,” that’s kind of what it’s like being in a band, because we do have some structure in it. In that way, it’s magical. I’ve lucked out, I’m with some great people, we have a great crew, we have a great band. We all feel a great deep appreciation for what we’ve done and putting my cards on the table, there was maybe a time where we felt disappointed that we weren’t able to move along further or achieve certain dreams we had. You’re focused on growing and being bigger, and having more people hear your music. This record wasn’t in that place. This record said, “Wherever this road takes us, it’s been magical and let’s just enjoy every minute we get together, playing music, every fan that we have, every ticket that sells.” That just means the world to us.

MR: Let’s get into a couple of the breaks you’ve had so far, like your single, “Shady Esperanto And The Young Hearts,” cracking Billboard‘s Top 20 in Triple A.

SK: It rolls right off the tongue. I was told by several people who know more than I do that it was a bad name for a single, and they may absolutely be right about that in hindsight. That was cool.

MR: That was from your first Vanguard record, and in 2009, you were named Entertainers of The Year by the Armed Forces.

SK: That was a nice honor.

MR: Also, in 2010, you celebrated your 1000 show together in New York City.

SK: Yeah, a lot of shows. I’ve played a lot of concerts with these guys.

MR: Regarding your career, what would you suggest others to take a peak at it?

SK: I couldn’t advise others, because so many people have done their thing in such a different way than we’ve done ours with great success. I know one fact, that we couldn’t do anything differently than we have. Even the mistakes that we’ve made and the blown opportunities that we’ve had along the way, they were just a part of what ultimately lead to what we sing about and what we represent. For us, part of that has been the moniker of being a hardworking band and being a working class operation. It’s worked for us, this way of being. It is a little bit of a mission now, because part of what we’re out here preaching is to not give up when things don’t go exactly as you planned they would. In our tougher moments, that’s medicine I have to take too.

MR: But you’ve also had some rewards, such as having songs on shows like One Tree Hilland the like.

SK: Yeah, and don’t get me wrong, we’ve had enough reason to go on. It’s been awesome. We’ve gotten to play to amazing crowds. Just last night, we were in Minneapolis and I thought, “If this isn’t the best night of my life, I don’t know what is.” So, we’ve had plenty of wins along the way.

MR: Also you had a Top Ten record with “Maria,” when Doc Walker recorded it.

SK: That’s right! That was awesome, man. We were touring in Canada and we got to see them one night and hear it. I’ll tell you, the songwriter in me? There is no greater rush than hearing somebody else play your song and seeing the crowd react to it.

MR: I want to ask you, what advice do you have for new artists?

SK: This isn’t original advice here, but I read something recently that said, “Focus on the music, writing great songs, and putting on a great show.” Don’t get to sucked into the internet and feel like it’s all marketing or your success will live and die on how you market it. You will get a shot if you really take care of the art. I will offer that piece of advice because I wasn’t always great at that. I was very involved in the business for quite a while, but really, when you start writing good stuff, that’s when the doors open.

MR: Do you still work with St. Jude’s?

SK: We do, every chance we get. We’ve been down there and played a couple of times, and we sell handwritten lyrics every holiday season. It’s just a great organization, you can’t lose with those guys.

MR: Speaking of that, I wanted to talk about your song “Noelle,” which is a beautiful closer to the record and is a song for your youngest daughter…am I right?

SK: That would be it.

MR: You gave her a beautiful song and I love the concept of your being asked how many songs are you going to write for your family, your answering as many as it takes.

SK: Yeah, I told you, I was really self-conscious about how many tunes I wrote about family. It’s not like we put them all on the record by any stretch, but they were all in the batch. Many of the ones that felt the most inspired and rose to the top were the ones about family. Someone actually asked me that, so that line sort of wrote itself. In a way, I think that it just felt right to address it in there, and Noelle, as children are, is an incredibly inspiring little miss. It’s nice to have a tribute to her exist in print.

MR: Thank you for spending time with us, Stephen. I wish you much luck on the road and with your family.

SK: Thank you so much man, and thank you so much for diving into those lyrics. It’s been good talking to you.

Transcribed by Theo Shier