On Friday October 20 SUPERSONIC BLUES MACHINE, featuring Fabrizio Grossi (bass,producer), Lance Lopez (Guitars, vocals) and drum legend Kenny Aronoff, release their second album, Californisoul. More than just a band, Supersonic Blues Machine is a vessel which hosts a swag of celebrity guest musicians such as Billy Gibbons, Steve Lukather, Eric Gales, Robben Ford, and Walter Trout, all of whom appear on Californisoul.
AM’s Greg Phillips was honoured to have the opportunity to chat to Kenny Aronoff this week about the band, the album and his gear.
Where do you even begin to discuss the career of drum icon Kenny Aronoff? He’s responsible for the beats on so many recordings and tours by classic artists such as John Mellencamp, Bob Seger, Joe Cocker, Celine Dion, Melissa Etheridge, The Bo Deans, Chickenfoot, Smashing Pumpkins, Avril Lavigne and for the last two decades he’s been John Fogerty’s drummer. When I caught up with Kenny on the phone, he’d just arrived home from Mexico, where he’d been part of the celebrations for Sammy Hagar’s 70th birthday. “I was down there for a cool birthday party with Darryl Mc Daniels from DMC,” he tells me. “We did the Aerosmith song Walk This Way and we did a new song I recorded with Darryl. it was great hang, great party.”
The Supersonic Blues Machine story has it’s origins in another all-star band called The Goodfellas, which also involved Lukather, acclaimed keyboard player Steve Weingart and the Italian American bass player and producer Fabrizio Grossi. The band toured through Europe for just a couple of weeks in 2010 but it was enough to establish a great friendship and working relationship between Grossi and Aronoff. Further down the track, guitarist, singer-songwriter Lance Lopez was invited onboard and the project morphed into Supersonic Blues Machine.
According to Grossi, the concept of the new Supersonic Blues Machine album is that Californisoul is “a soundtrack for an imaginary road trip up the California coastline to the heady, halycon days of the early 70s … this is much closer to Woodstock and Watkins Glen than it is to a cut and paste A-list vanity session. This is about friendship, the brotherhood of the blues, and bringing the blues up to this moment in time.”
Aronoff totally agrees with Grossi’s explanation. “There are many different sounds on there but we definitely wanted a feel and a vibe like it was 1969,” he says. “It has a California style of a blues-rock, improv, peace and love vibe that was going on in that era. You turn on the radio in those days, you’d get The Beatles, The Stones, The Beach Boys, and everybody else in between and we wanted that feel, that it wasn’t just one thing. One songs sounds a little ‘Santanish’, other songs are much funkier, some are bluesier. There’s a variety and that’s what makes the record so cool.”
While the guest guitarists weren’t all in the studio together with the band laying down their tracks, you’d never know the difference, such is the wonderful band vibe accomplished in the production of this recording.
“The way we did it was that I recorded the drums,” Kenny begins to explain. “I have so much experience recording drums, being involved in things selling over 300 million units and so many diamond and gold albums and I have played so many styles of music … so I know how to lay down a drum track and make it sound like we’re playing live. With Lance there was enough for me to play to with his vocals and guitars. With someone like Steve Lukather, when it came to his solo part, I imagined what Steve would play and felt that he could also be inspired by what I did. In the end it felt like we all recorded together.”
For a guy who has recorded drum parts for so many successful records, I wondered whether Kenny used multiple kits for this album or stuck to one …
“Basically one,” he confirms. “It’s my Tama Maple Starclassic kit with a 24 inch bass drum but for some songs I used a 1955 kit … 26 inch high, which is the head size and 14 inch deep, which is quite short. I used that on certain songs to get a more vintage sound but it was mostly the green sparkle kit that I had on tour with Fogerty for years and Michelle Branch and Joe Cocker.”
And Kenny’s number one factor for getting a great drum sound in the studio?
“Well it starts with having good equipment and Tama make good equipment. I have my own signature snares and I have a very special head that Evans make called the Heavyweight on top and Clear 300 on the bottom. You get all the frequencies. With cymbals, I’m a Zildjian guy, have been since I was born. I used the 18″ crashes at first, which are 18″ Armand medium thin crashes then I went to 19″ Dark Ks. Sometimes I use 19″ K cymbals to get a bigger sound. I use 15″ New Beat hi hats and sometimes 16″ hats that were made for me. It’s also the microphones that I use. I use a lot of ribbon mics, some very expensive mics. Then I use the BAE, British Audio 312A, they’re very accurate replicas of the old Neve and API preamps and tubes and then it’s my hands, the way I hit the drums and play. The mics are trying to capture what is already there. The sound starts with me and the drum set.”
What did it mean to you when you when Tama originally came to you and said we’d like to do a signature snare? Was that something you dreamed about when you were a kid?
“I didn’t dream about it but I sure loved the idea when they asked me,” he says. “I was honoured. What I was really happy about was that it replicated a snare drum, one of my favourite snare drums that I played on a lot of the Mellencamp records with, a lovely Supraphonic 400, it records so well.”
Aronoff is such a hard working musician and is so in demand as a session player that the work he obtains is so varied and exciting, taking him to all parts of America and the world. Unfortunately on October 1st this year he happened to be in Las Vegas, a town nobody wanted to find themselves in as the mass shooting nightmare unfolded. It impacted on Kenny immensely. However, merely days later in an act of defiance he and his musician mates were back on stage in that town backing John Fogerty. The show was made even more poignant due to the death of Tom Petty on October 2nd.
“You know I drove past the Mandalay Bay hotel at 10pm, which was 8 minutes before all hell broke loose,” he explains. “I was in Vegas with my corporate thing and I had my own band there. We drove by the concert and we were talking about it and we had no idea. Then we got to the Hard Rock Hotel and we came down about 10.30 and talking and the next thing you know people were talking about some shooting and then we saw it all on CNN. And then Petty dying, we honoured him in the show. We played his song I Won’t Back Down. It was a very heavy time but I am glad we kept going, I really am.”
Moving forward, Kenny Aronoff has plenty on, least of all the release this week of the new Supersonic Blues Machine album Californisoul. I naively jumped the gun by asking him about his 2018 plans when 2017 still has so much to offer …
“Next year? How about tomorrow?” he laughs. “After we’re done talking I have a meeting with a guy who has hired me to be the musical director for the TJ Martel cancer foundation event, honouring TJ who died this year. Sharon Osbourne is the host with a whole bunch of other artists, then tomorrow I fly to Washington DC to present a PBS cartoon about Kenny and his musical friends! Then I fly to Indiana to lecture for two days at a university, then I fly to Nashville to do the Kenny Rogers tribute for 4 days. We’re rehearsing and then we’ll film and record. Dolly Parton will be singing … all kinds of people involved. From there I fly to LA and play with John Fogerty and Brad Paisley on an aircraft carrier, then I have a couple more shows with Fogerty. I get home, do some sessions editing my new book, then I’m off to Jamaica to speak. Then there’s something for the armed forces in New York with a lot of celebrity guitar players like Billy Gibbons, home back to New York to to the TJ Martel then it’s Christmas. Next year I do the MusicCares concert, which is a big show before the Grammys featuring Fleetwood Mac and many different artists with Don Was as musical director. I’m working on my second book. The first one Sex, Drums and Rock ‘n’ Roll did really well. This one is more about why I work so hard and what makes me do it and how important it is to do that. It will be out some time next year.”
Californisoul is out October 20, 2017