Myles Kennedy: Leader Of The Free World
When Myles Kennedy took some time out of the touring tornado that is ALTER BRIDGE and made the most of some well-earned time off from hanging out with SLASH to record and release his debut solo album, 2018’s Year Of The Tiger; it was no surprise the six-string soprano found his footing so quickly. Crafted as a concept album, Year Of The Tiger saw Kennedy explore the death of his father during his early childhood and the psychological effects that’s had on him over the years against a backdrop of bluesy acoustics in a stripped-back affair for the vocalist. Once the critical acclaim and catharsis coursed through his veins, the vocalist found himself back in the ALTER BRIDGE fold for their sixth studio album Walk The Sky.
By now, it’s a tale as old as time for anyone who’s not been living under a rock over the last year and a half; Coronavirus came and conquered and sent the world as we know it into lockdown. Along with its consequences came the creative catalyst for the creation of The Ides Of March, Kennedy’s second solo album. Written and recorded as the world went from pre-pandemic paranoia to post-pandemic panic, it trades in Year Of The Tiger’s stripped-back approach for a fully-fledged hard-rock attack.
“I was pleasantly surprised with how that first record was received, because it was such an acoustic-based record and I’m known for being more of a rock guy, so I didn’t know how that would pan out and I guess what it showed me is that I have a future as a solo artist which is really wonderful,” explains Kennedy, smiling as wide as a Cheshire Cat for the majority of our chat. “But I figured that well, we know that that formula seems to work so let’s mess with the formula a little bit and let’s bring in more of an electric element, so that was another risk I thought would be fun to take. I wanted to make a record that explored more guitar playing and lead playing and improvising, because that’s where i started as a guitar player and I wanted to get back to those roots.”
Whilst Year Of The Tiger took MYLES KENNEDY on a trip down memory lane to the darker sides of growing up, The Ides Of March allowed him the opportunity to rediscover the golden age of youth, when rock and roll ran through his eardrums and lit up a light inside his mind. “It really was a rekindling of a love affair that started decades ago when I heard some of those early LED ZEPPELIN records, so what a wonderful luxury to have this opportunity to do that, because I obviously get to do so much stuff with ALTER BRIDGE and it’s different, and so much stuff with SLASH & THE CONSPIRATORS and it’s different too, so to step into this realm and just do whatever I feel, and then find there are people from both the other entities from a fan standpoint who’ll embrace it and give it a chance and come to the shows, it’s wonderful.”
Being able to bring his childhood cherishment together with his wizened wizardry for finding those magical melodies meant the pressure was off as he knew he could throw it out and let his fan base flood it with fervour. With his newfound creative freedom flowing, Myles found himself fretting with feeling on top of the world whilst the rest of it was struggling to keep their heads above the water. “The good thing about what has happened for me was that I had no drought of inspiration. There was plenty to draw from, there was too much to draw from frankly, and as a lyricist this is selfish because obviously I would prefer it if the world hadn’t shut down and people hadn’t lost their jobs, and people hadn’t got sick and died, but as a creative person, there was plenty to draw from and I’ve made records where that hasn’t always been the case and it becomes a challenge.”
The challenge wasn’t so much finding the inspiration that brings The Ides Of March to life, but more the flipside of feeling so free creatively; MYLES KENNEDY found himself taking a leaf out of Alice’s book by taking a trip down the rabbithole and getting caught up in the chaos of being a prisoner in a pandemic. “Lyrically I immersed myself deeply into some of this stuff especially in a time where there was so much uncertainty and concern, I really went down the rabbithole and it had a effect on me. It wasn’t always good and to me, when I hear some of these songs and read some of these lyrics, it’s palpable how it was affecting me, and that’s the goal at the end of the day. I’m not interested in making a record that’s just empty, I want the record to be something that I’ll listen to years down the road, and it’s like a sonic journal, like ‘oh, I remember that emotion – that was a good time, or that was a tough time’ and I want it to be genuine.”
The result is a rollicking rock-and-roll adventure that travels across a sea of soundscapes – everything from campfire country-rock (Moonshot) and indie-folk (Wanderlust Begins) to prog-rock odysseys (Ides Of March) and hard rock hits (Wake Me When It’s Over) – that tackles headfirst the hardships our universe is undergoing. The Ides Of March is an album that sees MYLES KENNEDY support his soul-searching with a voyage through our global struggles with tolerance and unity, politicking and fake news.
His journey took him travelling in a time machine to the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, reflecting on the police-community relations and ethnic tensions that took the riots by storm. The thoughts slipped into MYLES KENNEDY‘s stream of consciousness, becoming anthemic opener Get Along. Little did the lyricist know his song would find itself more befitting of the present in a matter of weeks after it’s conception, as the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement came to fruition.
“I remember thinking about what a profound impact the riots had in the early nineties, and Get Along was written in March of last year, so I had no idea what was about to happen,” explains a bewildered Myles. “I didn’t have that crystal ball that by the summer there was gonna be protests in the streets every night and it was gonna be this incredibly relevant theme; in fact to be honest I was wondering if it was going to be relevant at all, and that’s not to say that intolerance and lack of unity is not something we’ve been struggling with for as long as we’ve been humans, but as far as something that is suddenly in our faces to that degree, I had no idea where things were going, the song was long done and then all that happened and it took on a whole new relevance.”
Fortune telling may not be MYLES KENNEDY’s forte, but finding relevance in anything and everything is at the heart of all he does. If there’s one constant throughout the creative evolution that emits from The Ides Of March, it’s the album’s ambiguous affair lyrically that leaves it open for your own interpretation. It’s something that sits closely to his heart, as he explains. “I think that’s something that’s always been important to me as a writer is to try and make it ambiguous enough to where the shelflife won’t expire. You can start getting very literal and bringing up specific circumstances and then it dates it – so I chose to look at it in a broader view, and reflect on the emotions and then throw it out there. That’s something that takes time to develop as a lyricist, because initially your knee jerk reaction is to be literal, and to sometimes not leave things to the listeners imagination, so it’s a real delicate dance.”
The Ides Of March, as an album, waltzes through a flurry of delicate dances that weaves a web of both optimism and pessimism in a world obsessed with the latter. There’s songs that sift through the sensationalism of fake news and media bias, of our ability to pander to moral panics and doomsday complexes, and our human need for compassion and companionship. The video for Get Along saw MYLES KENNEDY team up with his long-term manager and bass player Tim Tournier to translate the album’s overarching themes into a four-minute synthesis that sees the animals of the forest come together to fight against the humans who’ve bought pollution to the planet.
“We didn’t want it to be something that was super literal and we didn’t want it to be something that would polarise people, because obviously if that lyric is misunderstood and a certain visual is put into the mix, it has the potential to be divisive, and I’m certainly not interested in that,” asserts Myles authoritatively, before adding, “we thought it would be interesting to look at it from the standpoint of finding a common antagonist that would unify something that is normally combative and if you look at the animal kingdom, there’s a food chain and there’s a hierarchy, so you know, you don’t see animals just joining together to fight a common cause so we thought it would be interesting to approach it from that angle.”
It’s an angle that MYLES KENNEDY approaches not only across The Ides Of March and it’s 11 tracks but throughout his own life too. Communication, he concurs, is the key to the world coming together once more to right our wrongs, suggesting “we now live in a world where people go to their corner and they get their news source from the source that is congruent with how they view the world so that’s the prism they view the world through. Now some of that may be true and some of it may not, and that’s the interesting thing; you have to ask yourself ‘am I being hoodwinked? Am I being manipulated? Am I being brainwashed?”
These are all questions MYLES KENNEDY has spent decades deliberating over, much like philosophers and the meaning of life. Much of his music, especially across his solo efforts, feeds into, and out of, his own personal experiments with communication in relationships. “I have a theory, and I try to apply it to my own life, which is that I like hanging out with people who I don’t agree with. Some of my closest friends where I live, we do not agree on things as far as politics go, as far as certain things with science go, and it’s great because we don’t live in this echo chamber where we just sit there and stroke each other off and go ‘our way is the only way’ – like no, it’s ‘hey man, here’s an idea, have you thought about this? And what if it’s this? And this?’”
For a frontman who’s found himself staring out into the distance and across the horizon for as long as he can remember, having spent years in and out of bands before ALTER BRIDGE was even a baby, his attempts to better understand those around him has had a profound effect that he feels has evolved him as he moves through his solo career and onwards, something which he wishes to share with his listeners, and the world around them, on The Ides Of March. “I’ve found myself through that compromise and through understanding a different perspective, you know, I’ve found myself evolving and it’s broadened my horizons. Sure it’s hard on my ego sometimes if I’m wrong and something I thought was an absolute is not an absolute, but that’s great because I feel like that discussion is paramount to human’s continuing to have a future because my fear is our own egos and our own need to be right, you know heading into the corner and being locked in to this view. I’m just trying to open my mind and I think people should do the same because maybe we’re not always right and we should listen to the other side of things.”
In the end, no matter how dark or how daunting the world we live in gets, MYLES KENNEDY wants us to let the light in at all times and let us find comfort in hope. “I hope they pick up on the element of optimism. There’s a song on there called Moonshot, which was one of the first songs written, and it’s interesting cause it starts ‘I remember when we were suiting up again before the end of time’ – which is the idea that we took so much for granted as touring musicians, like standing in my wardrobe case and getting ready for the gig and you take that for granted that you’ll have that option night after night indefinitely and that wasn’t the case, things got shut down, so the chorus manifests that spirit of optimism, though it seems like it’s a moonshot, we’re going to get back to the start, we’re going to get back to the way things were, and I hope that concept is conveyed as the listener is listening to this record that things are going to be okay.”
The Ides Of March is out now via Napalm Records.
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