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Tom Keifer


Imagine being denied the possibility of doing what you absolutely love doing, for the rest of your life. That's what faced Tom Keifer when he first started having throat problems in the mid '90s. Most people know the story by now but for those who don't: at the height of their powers, the Philadelphia rock band Cinderella was struck down by a medical issue that forced Tom to consult a myriad of doctors and come back empty-handed with a solution.

Finally a doctor pronounced that Tom had a paralyzed vocal chord and in a worst news scenario, said that there was no cure and he might not ever be able to sing the same way again. However, after countless hours of exercises to retrain the vocal chord and several operations to correct the resulting problems, he eventually found his voice getting stronger.

With blue skies on the horizon, Tom set about making his solo record which was abandoned earlier. The just-released The Way Life Goes, is a tremendous collection of songs, furthering the adventurous streak that began with Long Cold Winter and was honed in Heartbreak Station.

"The Flower Song", the first single, is a Stones-y delight with its light and breezy aura while the absolutely stunning second single, "Solid Ground", finds Tom channelling his inner Stewart/Mariott. The rest of the songs all have their own personality, making it a really well-rounded record instead of a lot of the other releases out today that all just re-tread familiar ground.

Besides the two singles, my favourite songs, "A Different Light", "Cold Day in Hell" and "Thick and Thin" each have a different flavour, easily securing Tom for comeback of the year honors.

It was a real pleasure to speak with Mr. Keifer recently to talk about the record and how it came together.

antiMusic: Is this album as much of a personal statement about triumph over adversity as it is about simply great music?

Tom: Well the lyrics come from a personal place or from life. That's pretty much how I've approached songwriting. I really came up on a lot of great songwriters in the '70s, like Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart and The Eagles. You know all those bands back then, they were inspired by American Roots music, Blues, and Country and R&B and Gospel and it's all about real stuff, everyday life and real things. And certainly much of these lyrics express things that I've been through or have learned or watched other people go through.

antiMusic: I know you started a solo record back in the '90s but since you have come back successfully from your throat problems, why is the first product out a Tom Keifer solo record instead of Cinderella?

Tom: Well I did start writing and was considering doing a solo record in the '90s and it kept getting put on the back burner. One of the reasons it did was because shortly after I moved to Nashville and was going to start working on my solo record, Cinderella reformed and we were given a big record deal with a major record company who was promising all kinds of good things for us. The record never got made and it turned into an ugly court battle and lawsuit.

So we were restricted from recording for a number of years during the legal problems and during that time was when I started work on this record and I did it independently of the label. So I've just been working on it slowly. I started cutting the tracks in 2003 and just kind of, when it's finished, it's finished, kind of vibe is how I approached it. And you know, the band, Cinderella continued to tour throughout the last 10 years that I've been making this record.

And you know, eventually (laughs) I've worked on it so long, I'm going to release it so there you are. There was no grand plan or anything. I mean I always had the intention of releasing it at some point and I just worked on it until I was happy with it. So that's kind of the story there. It worked out well timing wise because right when I'd finished the record and I'd shopped it around to find a label, and I found a great label for it, Merovee Records --- the timing of signing with them and them wanting to release this actually coincided with Cinderella deciding to take a hiatus this year. We'd toured pretty extensively the last three years. So the timing worked out actually perfectly in that sense.

antiMusic: How much material is from the collection you first put together back in the '90s?

Tom: Hmmm there's a song or two from like the late 90s. Even though I'd started working, writing in, I'd say '95 probably, I would say most of the songs were written between the years '99 and 2003 I think when we actually started recording.

antiMusic: Did you update or redo this material very much, especially since your wife Savannah was now involved with this project?

Tom: Nothing was updated in that sense. The co-writers that you see listed on these tracks were there from the inception of the song or maybe not from the initial inspiration of the song but certainly we would write the song together. Savannah and I wrote a bunch together and I wrote with some other really great writers here too. It went really well.

It was more updated and changed constantly from 2003 when we actually started cutting the tracks and producing the record was just the instrumentation and the arrangements. We really spent a lot of time into getting the right feel and instrumentation and arrangements and vocal performances and guitar parts and stuff.

Over a period of 10 years we really just chipped away at that until we had the right thing I guess. It's never like an exact science because you write a song and you get this vision in your head and you hear this thing in your head and you're trying to make this to come out of the studio speakers, so you're creating it. It's not an exact science.

antiMusic: Were there any parameters to the project when you knew you were finally going to be putting this out or was the just the best batch of songs going to win a space?

Tom: Best batch of songs. (laughs) That's kind of how I've always approached it. It always starts with the song. If you don't have a song, you can go in and have the greatest recording, performance, mix. But if it's not a good song, it's still not a good song. Obviously I had a lot of time to write and had a lot of songs to pick from because I wrote from '95 to about 2002 so I had a pretty good creative burst there, and worked constantly through that period and had lots of stuff to choose from.

antiMusic: With Cinderella, except for a couple of exceptions, you wrote all the material. What was the experience like to co-write a lot of these songs?

Tom: It was cool. It was like a breath of fresh air, or maybe a shot in the arm because you know I had already had a pretty long career and written a lot of stuff. When I started co-writing with people in '95 with the idea of a solo record, I was looking for some new blood, a shot in my arm, a kick in the ass, inspiration or whatever you want to call it.

That's why I eventually moved to Nashville because I'd started writing with people here and working with some really great people who were inspiring. But also I saw the whole music scene and how incredible the musicians were here and that's why I moved here originally, because is thought, "Well, this would be a great place to work on the solo record." And like I said, it got put on the back burner for a number of years after that. I love the experience of the co-writing thing. It certainly brings in a whole other dimension and aspect to it. Some one else's input is great.

antiMusic: Let's talk about a few of the songs. "The Flower Song" was the lead-off single and can you ever tell that the Stones are your favorite band. Without seeming like a copy of them, this sounds like it could have been lifted from Exile on Main Street. Just an excellent song. Tell us about writing this one.

Tom: I wrote that with Jim Peterick. It was an idea that I had. Jim was with Survivor and the Ides of March�just a great writer and a good friend of mine. He wrote a few songs on the record. "The Flower Song" was one of them. I had this kind of idea for this chorus in my head for a while and this is an example of how the co-write thing works with me. Even though I'm co-writing, I still approach writing the same, where I wait for the song to come to me, or you wait for something to inspire you. And that can happen anywhere. It usually never happens when you sit down with an instrument and say, "I'm going to write a song." Usually that's when I go blank.

I'll be in Aisle 7 of Home Depot and something will start playing in my head and it's usually like a lyric or an idea that you get or a spark or some kind of thing that you want to write about. So coming into a co-write, sometimes those ideas will float around in your head for days, weeks, months even a couple of years. That's the kind of thing that I'll bring into a co-write. I had most of the chorus kind of rattling around in my head for that song and the day that I was writing with Jim, I pulled that idea out and played it for hi and he really liked it. And we started working on verses and the rest of it together. So it's cool. He's a lot of fun to write with.

antiMusic: I can imagine working with somebody else, there is obviously more give and take. What was it writing with Jim Peterik. Both of you are established writers. Were there times where both of you would have an idea and latch into it and not really want to move from there or was there really a kind of give and take?

Tom: It's always give and take. That's what you want in a co-write. Whether writing Jim, or Savannah and Jim and I have written songs together, like a three way. And ultimately, whether it's two people or three people writing a song, ultimately what you want is, you've got to respect each other's opinion. And if you have an idea that the other writer doesn't like, you've got to let it go. And you wait until (laughs) the other writer or all three writers really dig it.

And I think that's really good, that's a strength that's brought to the writing process because you've got a larger jury than just yourself. So it has to meet the standard of all the people in the room or all the writers in the room. And that's a good thing. So if you're in a room with somebody who throws out an idea and two of the other writers go, "Nah, I don't know about that", and they just keep pushing it and pedalling it and won't give up on it and you still don't like it, you might be in a room on your own (laughs.). But it does have to be give and take and everybody has to like it. And I think that's when you end up with the best stuff; when it meets all the writers' standards whether it's two or three or however many people you have in the room.

antiMusic: "Solid Ground" sounds like what would happen if the Stones teamed up with The Faces for a song in 2013. Lyrically, are you talking about putting your vocal problems behind you?

Tom: Yeah, probably a lot of that in it. To me it's about how life keeps moving and changing. It's like the old saying, "It's a journey not a destination." I've never really felt like I've reached a point in my life where I could sit back and say, "Yeah, I'm on Easy Street now". I think that's the nature of life. I don't think any of us ever really get to that point, as much as we're looking for that and hoping for that "Hey, I've arrived. Everything's going to be great now. I'm just going to be happy all the time and life's going to be easy."

It's not the nature of life. It keeps moving and life is something you need to keep up with and you've got to roll with everything that it throws at you. There's always going to be something that life's going to throw at you. For me, you know I was at the height of my success and financially fairly secure and everything was great. And then I was hit with a paralysed vocal chord. So it was, okay, gotta roll with this one.

And everybody goes through those things. You can have aspects of your life that are just amazing and going well but there's always going to be something that comes along that causes you to adjust or roll with it. I just think that's the nature of life. That's really what that tune is about. And certainly the voice problems were things that I had to roll with and learn how to get around and deal with, make changes and adjustments. There have been plenty of other things in life too that we all have to come up against.

antiMusic: Musically, because I think you said that the lyrics come first, for "Solid Ground", did that come out in on shot or did you have to piece that together?

Tom: That came together pretty quick. I wrote that with Savannah, my wife. And we wrote that in one night here at the house. We were just sitting around the living room, with a couple of guitars, and I believe I had an idea for the chorus floating around in my head and I kind of pulled that out. And then the two of us just went to town, I mean it just fell out very quickly. That one we wrote really fast. Not all songs happen that way. There's other ones�I've written songs over a period of two years, just a little bit at a time.

antiMusic: Like I said, one of my favorite songs is "A Different Light". What can you tell us about that song?

Tom: That one took almost two years. (laughs) That's the opposite end of "Solid Ground". "Solid Ground" was an hour. "A Different Light" was almost two years; probably about a year and a half.

Savannah and I wrote that. She had the title, "A Different Light". I'm not sure that either of us really knew what that meant when we first started working on it.

I remember sitting around one night and kind of just strumming some chords and we were coming up with melodies and stuff and we got a semblance of the chorus together and then we just knocked it on the head for a while. And then, I don't know, a few months later we had some ideas for the verses and put that together. So we had the song together but it was all in the same key and as much as we liked the song it just wasn't doing it for us just yet.

Months and months later, we went for my birthday to a club here in town that played a bunch of old 80s music, the pop stuff like Thomas Dolby and a lot of that kind of New Wave stuff and all that crazy production. And the thing that we really left the club with that night was all the key changes in the songs and how cold they were and how (laughs) brutally blunt they were going from odd keys to you know�with no set up or anything. And we noticed how powerful that was and we came home and we experimented for probably weeks with different key changes from the verse to the chorus.

antiMusic: Yeah you really notice that a lot.

Tom: And that's how that came to be. When we settled on I think it's from the verse is in E and the chorus goes to B Flat. We tried a whole bunch of key changes and we settled on that, which is a really odd key change

antiMusic: Yeah.

Tom: And that's what that transition between the verse and the choruses did, just brought the song to life. But from the time she walked in with that title to the time we wrote it all and came up with those key changes and all it probably was over the course of a year and a half.

antiMusic: So I guess that would be in the minority of the way songs come out for you?

Tom: I mean it's happened before. There's other ones that have taken that long. But they're all different. But usually they don't take that long. The best thing you can do, if you're not feeling it, if something is not right, the best thing to do it walk away from it and wait until something hits you later. That's how I've always approached it. If you force it, it's going to sound forced. So if you need to take a little time away from it, if you've just got a chorus and you can't think of the verse, just wait. (laughs)

antiMusic: "Cold Day in Hell" is just excellent.

Tom: "Cold Day in Hell" I wrote with Jim Peterik and you know, I think that song lyrically is, it came together much in the same way as "The Flower Song" did. I had an idea for a chorus that had been rattling around in my head for a while. That seems to be what hits me first, is the chorus, because then you know what you're writing about right? (laughs)

The way it came together was much like that one. Then we got together and worked on the verses and stuff. And you know lyrically it's about something that everyone can relate to. You know in life there is the falling in love process and then there's the falling out of love process, or the break-up. (laughs) And that's one of those songs. I wrote another one of those years ago called "Nobody's Fool" and it seems to be a popular topic out there because we've all been through it.

antiMusic: Right. And "Thick And Thin"?

Tom: "Thick and Thin" I wrote for Savannah one afternoon. She had just been going through a pretty tough time, and shall we say, felt the sting of the music industry for the first time in her career. And was feeling pretty hurt. And I wrote that song for her to let her know that I would always be there for her.

antiMusic: Nice. You've had a bit of a chance now to give this a road test. This is the first time you've played, I'm assuming, with other people in a while. How was the experience?

Tom: Yeah, yeah. It was great. I've got a great band that we put together here, a bunch of friends of mine from Nashville. The first few nights in rehearsal felt strange and I even told them that. I remember looking at them and I said, "You know, this is like a big weird, scary, strange step for me." (laughs)

But after a few nights of jamming it just all came together and we all get along really well. They're great players. We had a really good time. We did about a three week run in February and it's about 50-50 new songs from the solo record and a bunch of old favourite Cinderella stuff. The show reflects the same kind of contrast that's on the solo record or maybe even that's on the Heartbreak Station or Long Cold Winter albums, where there's acoustic moments but there's a lot of really blistering high energy rock too in this show. And we're getting ready to do another leg of it starting the beginning of May. It's just been a blast.

antiMusic: Excellent. What does the rest of the year or the foreseeable future hold for you?

Tom: Just taking it one day at a time, man. I haven't had another record out in years and this all feels like a new adventure and we're going to see where life takes us here. But certainly we're going to start up with the tour here again in the beginning of May and we'll see where that goes. Not really sure yet. We're just kind of booking it as we go.

Morley and antiMusic thank Tom for taking the time to speak with us.

Visit Tom's official website here.

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