Rival Sons, a genuine rock and roll outfit hailing from Long Beach, California, is on tour supporting their latest effort Darkfighter, the first of a two-part installment that will be followed up by ‘Lightbringer’ later this year. Before the band delivered a barnburner performance recently in Worcester, Massachusetts, guitarist and songwriter Scott Holiday took time to have an insightful chat with Glide about ‘Darkfighter’, the virtues of sobriety, dedication to family, and the pros and cons of being on tour.
Scott, thank you for taking the time to meet. Let me start with my initial reaction to the new record. After listening to ‘Darkfighter’, I felt some subtle religious, good v. evil, or struggles with wrong v. right overtones throughout the record. Am I far off?
I think there is a clear contrast and kind of a fight with darkness, to be literal. I don’t know how religious Jay’s (Buchanan) writing is. There’s certainly his own internal struggles, the struggles that he sees happening on the world, but that’s more of a question for him. We talked a lot about all of that. He’s not ultimately a Christian or religious person, but he often peppers those themes in the music. I think he does so because it’s relatable and accessible. We don’t get blatantly religious. Jay does talk about God, in a fun way, using it loosely. We use the idea of the “preacher gone wrong’ in the music videos that we’ve already released for ‘Darkfighter’. It was fun. It was cinematic. It could also have really off-put some people. We’re not trying to be overly religious or to offput anybody. Within the band, we all walk different paths. It’s an interesting dynamic. I think there’s a theme of spiritual struggle, one to keep our heads above water. I think that’s a recurring theme. A theme that will be obvious on ‘Darkfighter’ and ‘Lightbringer’, is that of letting in the good things and blocking out the bad things.
Just coming through a divisive couple of years while we were making the record, where people couldn’t agree on anything and were at each other’s throats, where everything was politicized with racial tension, political tension, and social upheaval with COVID, it was insane. Think about the mask. If you were wearing it, you were a sheep and an idiot. If you didn’t wear it, you were an idiot because you wanted to kill people. If you believed it was a natural occurrence, you were an idiot. If you thought the government planted this, you were an idiot. Basically, no matter how you looked at it, people were hateful and strange towards each other.
My feeling was, being a hopeful person in a band full of hopeful people, that even though things got real dark we would open our hearts to each other again and start agreeing. You can only disagree for so long. How far was it going to go? An out-civil war or an all-out race war? And even then, it’s going to reach a peak and we’ll have to regroup. So, I feel that right now we may be in a state of regrouping. Possibly? I feel like people are starting to care for each other more, once again. And that’s good. I think that was a theme for us on ‘Darkfighter’. The idea was very literal with the title, fight at the darkness – every day.
Had your writing process changed, compared to ‘Feral Roots’ or even ‘Hollow Bones’?
It was the same in that Jay and I were sharing stuff back and forth. But it was completely different in that we did a lot of production, we had a lot more time to write and we had a lot more music that we had to focus on. We had to be a bit more decisive on what we wanted to let through. Our earlier records took thirty days, from start to finish. Even as short as 23 days. We’d get in, write, record, mix… done! So, somewhere between three and four weeks that we’d normally work. For Feral Roots, we worked for a little longer, maybe a couple of months. And for ‘Darkfighter’, we worked on it for two years. We were home. We couldn’t get in the studio, couldn’t go on tour, so there wasn’t any reason to rush it. It felt like we were writing a larger story arc, hence releasing ‘Darkfighter’ and later in the year, ‘Lightbringer’. We wanted to be a bit more careful on how the story unravels.
Announcing ‘Lightbringer’ as a companion album, was that a preconceived idea, or did it come from just having had generated a lot of music?
It came from having extra music. We didn’t know that it was going to be a two-part thing. When we tried narrowing down the song selections for one record, so that you’d have the full story, it was all too long. Honestly, I think it was too big of a bite to take. Too big for the listener. I questioned if people were ready for another album like Pink Floyd’s, ‘The Wall’.
On another note, do you have family back at home?
I have two kids and a fiancé.
How do you find a balance between your rock and roll persona and your role as a father and future husband?
I love being a father. I love my kids so much and I love my home life. I have a wonderful fiancé, great pets, and a beautiful home. Because I love my family so much, it’s easy for me to jump right back in. To be honest, I don’t get too caught up while I’m on the road. I’m sober and happy about it. I don’t feel the need to stand on a mountain and yell it to everybody. I do love it. I was sober for eleven years but then went back at it for about ten and I’ve now been sober for five. I won’t be going back. Honestly, I just want to live. I feel good. It’s very dangerous to be intoxicated on the road and very easy to become an alcoholic or a drug addict. I’ve lost a lot of friends to it. I know plenty of people who have lost people they know to it. I like to be present for my friends and my fans. Most importantly, I like to be present for my family. That’s how I balance it out. I’m always, me.
I don’t get caught up in the idea of being a rock star. When I’m playing shows, I don’t feel like everyone is cheering for me. I just want to create, whether people buy it or not. It’s the creature in me. I hope that the audience or the listener enjoys what I create. I want them to enjoy it. When you tell a story, it’s not just about yourself only, it’s about the devotion and service that you’re doing. In this life, it’s my service, through music. That’s what I get to do. I’m good at it. I create these musical worlds because I want to give them to people and have them go on this journey with me so that they can enjoy music the same way I do. It can’t be rock stardom because I’m a servant. How can I be the king and the servant all at once? I have to choose.
What are some of the pros and cons of being on the road?
A pro is that we become extremely focused on the art and the music. The crew and the band love each other. We’re like brothers. We’re close, so we enjoy our time together. We get to travel and see the world. We’re never sedentary, always in some new place. Playing music for people is a pro. When we write the records, we’re making the songs to present to the listener. We know that the songs are going to take on a whole new life and we have to be on the road to do that. Being on the road is a pro because ultimately, we’re finishing off the thought.
It’s all for being able to jump on this pirate ship, to get inside this club, grab our guitars, fill up the room and play our music for you, to see how it affects you to make you forget and so we can all forget together. The songs can take on a new life. The only way that we can do that is to come out and to be on the road. It’s all a pro. It’s completing the thought and completing the circle.
Cons? You know what I’m going to say already. We have to leave our families. It’s terrible. It’s a nightmare. I hate it. I don’t want to be away from them for one day. Being away for weeks at a time is brutal. I love my home life and I never need to leave to be honest, but it’s a double-edged sword. I have to go. I can’t stay. I love doing this. But I don’t want to leave my family. If I stay home too long though, I start to feel weird.
During the pandemic, I felt like maybe I wouldn’t continue doing this, doing what I do for people. I do it for me. I like to do it. It’s a real double-edged sword. It can be hard at times to be constantly moving, but it doesn’t bother me too much, personally. It’s just being away. So, if we get to the point where I can have one of these pirate ships and have my family on it, that would make it easier. I bring my family out on stints when the kids are out of school. I bring them out for two weeks at a time or for however long they can stand it and they love it.
Regarding touring, any Spinal Tap moments?
Constantly! Ha. I’d have to really think about it. We’re always pushing things live and throwing curve balls. We’re always trying to raise the bar and not afraid to make mistakes. We’re okay with trying things that may not work with the risk of fumbling it. If we fumble the ball, it’s not like we’re not going to run it. That’s not the kind of band that we are. We go for it and if it falls apart on deck, then congratulations to those who came to the show that night where we tried to throw the ball as far as it could go. Maybe we hail Mary’d it and our wide receiver slammed his head into the goal post.
What song from ‘Darkfighter’ are you excited to play live?
I enjoy all of them. Just because they’re new, new identities. It’s like having new clothes to wear. I’m using new tunings on my guitars. There’s new hooks, licks, ideas and effects. I’m not trying to change my identity or to be unrecognizable, but maybe just to the point where it’s different. I was in a different mindset for writing these new songs. One song that stands out for me is “Darkside”. It closes out the record and is extraordinarily dynamic. I think it’s emotionally powerful and we do it well live. It came together really quick. It was one of the first songs that we finished for the record.
Playing it live took a lot of preparation for me. I had to build a special guitar for it. I had to create ways of getting in and out of all the song’s sections. There’s times when I’m using multiple effects with a lot of layering of simple parts, but getting around all of those parts is very tricky. Dovetailing everything and overlaying it all takes a lot of finesse. It’s a lot of choreography and difficult at first, but when the choreography is clean, it’s like a beautiful dance. You can feel it as I set it in motion. It’s a lot to think about, until you don’t have to and it’s all second nature. Then the rest of the band is coming together with all their parts, and it folds together beautifully. I think “Darkside” live, has been going very well.
What do you want people to take away from listening to a Rival Sons record or from attending a show?
Sometimes music is great for working out or maybe it’s just background noise, but we’re very focused on the music and we want you to listen and to go on the journey with us. Not for me, but for you, the listener. That’s what we’re providing. I’m a fan of escapism, not in the way of escaping all your responsibilities, but ‘Darkfighter’ is forty minutes long. You can put that time aside. We should put time aside to meditate, put time aside for ourselves to focus, and to find time for fantasy or dreaming. Records help us dream. We’re so caught up in social media, screens, and our cellphones, that we forget to dream. We forget that the world that we live in was built on dreams, not other people’s ideas that we’re fed and that crowd our mind.
It’s beautiful to sit down and to listen to music. You can let go and let it take control. With our music, it’s not so literal that you have to follow along with what Jay is singing about, it’s there for you to incorporate your dreams into it. That’s what’s important. For that, I want people to escape with our music because most people are trapped with their worries, bills, the economy, politics, and so many things. We have so many things to worry about and it’s great to take forty-five minutes and just not do that. I would love it if people came to our shows and just freed themselves as much as they could. Just let go for a bit.
One Response
Rival Sons music is saving my life right now. I’ve seen other people make that statement online as well. I’ve seen two shows on this tour and have tickets to a third. Their live shows are transporting. Why they aren’t one of the biggest bands in the world no one can say. I heard of them because of a truck commercial. They are carrying a very important torch. God bless ’em.