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Battling The Blues With JOHN CORABI From THE DEAD DAISIES · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Kids.
• 0:00
  Speaker 2: This is John Carabbie and I'm here with Chris talking
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: about a new record from the Dead Daisies called Looking
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: for Trouble. It's a killer blues record. Give it a listen.
• 0:11
  Speaker 3: Hell yeah, John, thanks for joining us today.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Runner, thanks for having me. I'm unfortunately, well fortunately it's
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: midday for me, it's very early in the morning for you.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: I'm probably gonna trip ove my wives a few chimes.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: Mike's saying, I have to hold me up, no, no worries.
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: Also, as you say, by the Dead Daisies releasing new album,
• 0:36
  Speaker 4: Looking for Trouble on May the thirties.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: So how you feel about it?
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: You know what, I'm excited about it.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: So far, the first two songs that we released have
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: been getting great feedback from everybody. And as I was
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: saying earlier, you know this was it was what we
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: call a happy accident. You know this, this whole thing
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: came about in such a weird, random way. We we
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: went to this legendary studio in America called Fame Studios
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: and Muscle Souls, and it was kind of a bucket
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: list thing for all of us, including Marty. So we
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: went down there and we were kind of you know,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: with the thought in mind that we would just maybe
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: write and maybe do a little bit of recording down
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: in this legendary studio and and but it was weird.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: The studio is obviously it's it's it's weird. It's like
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I've said it already, it's a legendary place. But so
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: it's a functioning studio. But they do museum tours through
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: this place, and each night around dinner time they bring in,
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: you know, twenty thirty people. So we'd take a break
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: and then you know, we kind of sat and thought
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: about it. We're like, well, okay, the tour was over,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: we were done eating. You know, we'd cracked open either
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: a bottle of whiskey or some wine, and we're like, well,
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: we could go back to the hotel and uh sit
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: and watch TV all night, or let's just you know what,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: we're here, let's just jam, let's see, you know, let's
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: just have some fun. So we kind of started jaming, like,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: you know, just some blues that everybody was familiar with obviously,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: like crossroads going down uh Born under a bad sign.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: And then it was weird. We just kind of sat.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Marty kept the session rolling and we sat, we listened everything,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: We're like, okay, this is really cool. This is really cool.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Let's so what we did is kind of during the
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: day we worked on what became the Light Them Up record,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: and we just continued working at night and putting together ten,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of our favorite blues songs. And it's
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: so far, so good, man, everybody's been raving about it.
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: In case people haven't picked up by now, like this
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: isn't a normal Dead Daisies album. It's actually a selection
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: of some great blues tracks re recorded with the Dead
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: Daisies d and I added through it. So you've covered
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: songs from Muddy Waters, Freddie King, John Lee Hooker, led Belly,
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: bb King, Albert King, Robert Johnson, Rufus Thomas, and Hell
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: and Wolves. What was the selection process for what artists
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: and what songs you went for?
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: You know, you know, it's funny, you know, none of us,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: none of us went into this like blues experts or
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: purists or aficionados, whatever you want to call it.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: But it was funny.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: We like, once we started doing this, we really realized
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: like the blues was probably like the grandfather to all
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: these different genres of music, and it was it went
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: highly unrecognized for you know, a lot of years, you know,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: because it was really kind of considered a African American
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: form of music, you know what I mean, which was,
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: you know, White America called it the Devil's music, and
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: you know it was just like this CD underbelly whatever,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: and so a lot of people it went unrecognized. And
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: what happened is, I guess at some point in the thirties, forties,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: maybe early fifties, it somehow managed to make its way
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: over to the UK and Europe. And it's funny because
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: the Brits pretty much like really embraced it and then
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: they brought it back in, you know, through the voices
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: of Cream, led Zeppelin, the Stones, you know, all these
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: great bands that we grew up listening to. So pretty
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: much all of the songs on the record are songs
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: that we heard or we were familiar with through the
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: British Wave in the sixties and seventies. Like for example,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: David Lowe, he was like, oh, dude, we have to
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: do Little Red Rooster. And then he told us this
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: story about how he saw, you know, in Australia growing
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: up as a boy. He saw some TV program I
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: guess the Stones were on it and it was their
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: first kind of breakout song. But he saw them doing
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Little Red Rooster, which made him then fall in love
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: with the Stones, but had no idea that it wasn't
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: a Rolling Stone song, you know what I mean. And
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: it's pretty much the same for all of us, like Crossroads.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: I just assumed that was a Cream song, and you know,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: or and then skinnerd covered it and yeah again, even
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: arismis version of Walking the Dog. I always thought it
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: was their song. So that was our introduction to the blues,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: was through these other artists that we grew up listening to.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: So once we decided.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: To do the Blues record, we said, okay, let's do
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: these songs because this was our introduction to the blues.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: And it's basically it's like a double tribute. It's a
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: tribute to the artists that influence the artists that we
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: grew up listening to. If that makes any sense at all.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: You've actually you've re wiped these songs and then put
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: your idea at I throw on.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: But what's the process like that?
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: Like, how do you take an existing song and then
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: break it down and then reconstruct it in your images?
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: Is it hot?
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: It was a bit difficult because we didn't really want
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: to mimic somebody else's version, like we could have just
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: done Crossroads like Skinner did or Cream or whatever. But
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: you know, it was just like, okay, Doug, you do
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: what you do, Like, how can you play that riff
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: but make it different? You know what I mean? And
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: I thought he did a great job with it. But
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: you know, then the funny thing of it is, and
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: without sounding redundant, because a lot of these answers aren't
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: going to be a little redundant, but each song that
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: we decided on working on, it was like almost a
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: running joke with us, even with Marty, Like we would
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: sit there and we'd start working on a song and
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: we would go, what would led Zeppelin do? And the
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: song I'm sorry if my answers are a little long,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: but the song that we were using kind of as
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: a blueprint was when the levee breaks. Okay, and like
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: a lot of people don't realize it, or maybe they do,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I didn't not right away as a boy,
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: I just thought when the levee breaks was this epic
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: led Zeppelin song. At the end of the last song
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: on led Zeppelin four. And it wasn't until I got
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: older and actually started researching things that I found out
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: that that song was actually written in nineteen twenty nine
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: by a woman named Memphis Minnie and a guy named
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Kansas Joe Jackson, I believe, and the song was written
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: about a flood that we had here in America at that,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: you know, in the Mississippi River. They just wiped out
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: thousands of people's homes and farms and pounds. And so
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: two years later they write this song and Zeppelin somehow
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: found it. But what they did was they kept the
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: lyrics and they kept the vocal melody and then just
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: literally rewrote the music to make it sound like Led Zeppelin,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: at which you know, you have to admit they did
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: a fucking brilliant job with it.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: Yah.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: So that was the thing.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: We were like, Okay, like, if if we're going to
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: do this song, we have to do our take kind
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: of like what Zeppelin did to when the levee breaks,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: and it was it was a bit difficult, but we
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: kind of figured it out, you know what I mean.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: It was it worked out great.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: Yeahs, as much as you want to put your own
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: DNA on it, to you like there's always got to
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: be that underlion feeling that you want to pay respect
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: to the original version.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: I guess.
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: So how would you know if you've strayed too far
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: from the original, Like did you have a cut off
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: fight or a parmoda?
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Well, actually I don't know. Have you ever heard the
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Light Them Up record? Yes? Okay, so if you this
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: will show you how how closely it tied in. One
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: of the songs that we were working on, like we
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: were working at night. We were working on this song
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: called terror Plain Blues, which is an old Robert Johnson
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: song that Fog had did in the seventies. I believe
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: it was on there full for the City Record, right,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: But we didn't want again again, we didn't want to
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: take to like their vision. We wanted to do our
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: own thing. So we kept fucking around with the music
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: and I was like trying to sing this melody over
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: the music, and we were like, I think we've gone
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: too far. So we kind of pushed that song aside
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: and we did Sweet Home Chicago and we put that
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: on the Blues record. But we had this song. We
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: liked the music, but it was so different than Terror
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Plain Blues, like the original the integrity of Terror Plain
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Blues that were like, ah, man, this sucks. We love
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the music, but we you know. So what happened is,
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: like I said, we were doing both records at the
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: same same time. What we wound up doing is we
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: took the music that we had put together for terror
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Plaine Blues and we made it the last song on
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: the Light Him Up record, which is called take My
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Soul right who Yeah, but it doesn't sound anything like
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: terror Plaining Blues. But but if you really sit down
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: and listen to the lyrics, I actually took a little
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: bit of a blues approach to the lyrics, and I
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: wrote it about a guy that goes into a bar
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: and winds up getting into a fight over a woman
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: and kills another man and winds up going to prison
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: the rest of his life.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: And so it's then you can hear there's like a
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: it's almost like a prison chain gang in the beginning
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: of the song. So whatever, but how I did, Yeah,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: but we went we went too far with terror Plain Blues.
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: That's the ball of the story. Songs you reckon, rhythm,
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: ice fun today.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Uh you know what they were all in some.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Uh you know in some capacity.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: It was. It was all like a challenge, but a
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: fun challenge, and we were we just had a blast.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Could have been that there was alcohol involved, but we
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: had a We just had a great time. But I
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: think I personally, I think my favorite, like the one
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: that I kind of feel like really that we really
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: nailed was Black Betty, Like that version of Black Betty
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: is just it's just cool.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: It's cool. It was the hottest one to sprinkle the
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: iron gray.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: You know, probably for me, I would say, you know,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: probably the thrill is gone because it's such a classic
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: bb King, do you know what I mean?
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Like, Okay, how do we do this?
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: And I think we slowed it down a little bit
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: and did it in like a little bit of a
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: six or eight time thing, and Doug came up with
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: this really cool tag ending that I thought was fucking amazing.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: But that's such a that's like trying to rewrite that
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: one is such a classic that it was like trying
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: it's like trying to rewrite Stair to Heaven or you
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: know what I mean. It's like that's the bb King song,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean. Like, so that one it
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: was a little pedios I think for all of us
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: because we didn't want to stray two are you know
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: what I mean. So we just did a couple of
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: little subtle things in it to make it our own.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: And you know, whatever that one was, we were all
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: a little nervous about that one.
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah cool now, you know, as I've always had that
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: bit of a blues underbelly to you sound anyway.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: But do you think during this album is gonna bring
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: more of that out of your music in the future.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, to be honest with you, Like,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: you know, one of the things that I have realized,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: like and I think I said it earlier, like you
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: don't realize just how influential the blues are to all
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: other aspects of music, except for maybe like classical. You know,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: you're Strauss and Beethoven and that stuff's been around forever.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: But when you really look at the blues, you know,
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: I think that was the seed for country music, rock
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: and roll, you know, and then R and B. You know,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: all these rhythm and blues, you know what I mean,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: It all just kind of evolved and turned into this
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: massively beautiful, beautiful tree.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: So you know, I don't I don't really think I
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: mean even a c DC, you knows, as heavy as
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: they are, it's just the blues there. It's just their
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: take on the blues. So it's it's really kind of
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: crazy when you think about how many genres of music
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: the blues have affected. I would even go as far
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: as to say it's it's it's probably influenced to some degree,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: even rat you know what I mean. So it's just
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: you know, uh, the influences are always going to be there.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: I'm always going to write the way that I write.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I just really think this was, uh it was a
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: funn ex experience, but it was really as a musician
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: and a fan of music, it was really like just
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: overall an eye opening experience.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: Yea, Now, how about you guys are out on the ride.
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: I'd be your side of the world at the moment.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: But is there any plans that some visit us in
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: the future?
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: You know, dude, I've been saying this for I just told.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Our manager and David Lowie, I go, dude, were you
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: And I asked him, I said, did you guys go
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: to Australia with Glenn Hughes And I said no, And
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I go, Okay, do you realize My first year with
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: the band was twenty fifteen. That's the first and last
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: time that we've been to Australia. We have to get
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: back down there again. I've come a few a few
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: times on my own doing acoustics shows, but I go, dude,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: we have to get back down to Australia. So I'm
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: praying at some point this year or early next year
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: we can get down there and visit you guys.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: That'll be fantastic.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: I love coming down there. The only thing I don't
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: love about in Australia is the incredibly high prices of
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: your cigarettes and your fucking alcohol. But other than that,
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: you guys are awesome.
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: Before I let you go, John, I've introduced a new
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: segment towards FIGHTO Ball. So basically, I've gone through your
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: social media before I chat with you.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: I've come up with it a couple of fighters. I
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: want you to tell me a little bit more about.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: So I found me.
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: I found this one, mate. I've actually used some makeshift
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: toilets in my time. I've never had to use anything
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: like that.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: I did that. That was in Oh my God, who
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: was I? I was with ESP the Eric Singer Project,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: and it was a one of those areas where you
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: can go smoke and there's a fan, and then in
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: the in the table there was like a trash camp
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: for trash and uh, I just jumped up there, took
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: my pants down and started reading the magazine. And the
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: guys walked out of this room and that's what they saw,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: and one of them snapped.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: A photo of it.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: They thought it was hilarious. But it's one of those
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: air tight smoking facilities somewhere in Europe.
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: I want a sitting there from that time, Jesus.
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: The other one I found is this one here like this.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: Ray looks pretty trippy, right, well, that's of life actually
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: in real life.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Uh, let me see something.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: I'll see.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: I can't enlarge that, but I believe my friend that
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: you were looking at Michael Devin, not me.
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: You've been in it right before.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I don't know where that is.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: I picked the wrong fight.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, that's Michael. That's actually Michael Devin. And
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you know what that is. That
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: is the back lounge of our tour bus hit. Yes,
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: see the curtains right there, they're all curtains. So there's
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: three levels of bunks and Michael Devon sitting in the
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: back in his best Jesus Christ post.
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: Most if the couple is out the thirtieth, then I've
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: been fortunate enough to have a listen to it, and
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: it's an absolute crack of mine. So I congratulations and
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: hopefully we see you over here in the ne Fusia