The Rides’ Stephen Stills, Kenny Wayne Shepherd & Barry Goldberg – HuffPost 8.21.13
Mike Ragogna: I have a traditional question I want to ask all three of you. What advice do you have for new artists?
Kenny Wayne Shepherd: I always give horribly cliché answers to questions like that, so you probably won’t be impressed with my answer. But in all honesty, the thing that I have consistently done over the course of my career even when I was sixteen years old and signed my record deal and tried to make my first album is that I knew people were going to come at me trying to tell me what I needed to do and I was able from the very first day all the way up until now to stand my ground and do what I felt was right for my music and my career and not allow anybody to talk me into doing something otherwise. I’ll listen to people’s opinions and I’ll take it into consideration and if they have a good point, I’ll be the first to admit it. There’s no ego or pride in my game, it’s just that I’ll do what I think is right. If you’re going to be a new artist and you think you have a chance at being successful, you need to do what’s right. Don’t let anybody talk you into recording something you’re not sure about because you might have a hit with it, and if you have a hit with it, you’re going to be playing it the rest of your life so you’d better make sure you like it.
Stephen Stills: And that is the epitome of the difference between a cliché and the profound.
Barry Goldberg: You really have to believe in yourself. You can’t read what other people are going to think about you, what they think about your song. You pick people that you want to influence you, but you take that and you keep your own style and you develop your own sound and your style and you never give up and you believe in yourself. Never give up.
MR: Beautiful. Steve, what do you think?
SS: I think I said it, that cliché that he started with about standing your ground and what Barry said about being influenced by who you like being influenced by, that cliché is what binds these three people together.
MR: Any surprising things we should know about any of you that we don’t know yet?
SS: How to choose the set list. Mouse races.
MR: Mouse races!
BG: You take twenty mice and you put them in a box with the titles of the songs and then you release them into a room with a little hole at the other end and then the order in which they pass through the finish line is the song list.