“I’m not that interesting anymore cause you know me,” Todd Kerns says before breaking into a big laugh. Granted, I’ve talked with Slash’s bass player more than once but the former frontman for Canada’s uber-popular Age Of Electric and Static In Stereo has never failed to give us an interesting interview. Always entertaining, always jovial and always excited to talk about music, Kerns has recently turned his focus on something a little more serious: the songs on his new solo album Borrowing Trouble are tinted with life experiences of the more mature nature. Losing a friend, reminiscing about his adventurous past and searching his psyche, Kerns has built a house that may surprise his enormous fan base that are used to his normally fun and frolicking ditties with the Sin City Sinners. Taking a cue from his previous solo venture, 2004’s Go Time!, and singer-songwriters he admires, has helped his second dive into the solo ocean a revealing swim through his heart and soul.
But Todd Kerns being Todd Kerns, no interview can stay serious for too long and we are soon talking music, Slash – who made a brief appearance as if conjured up by the rock gods listening to us talk about him in the dressing room of The Pageant in St Louis a few weeks ago – his brush with fame not once but twice, and his plans for the rest of 2013.
“He was an influence to me when I was a kid,” Art Of Dying guitar player Tavis Stanley told me in an interview a few years ago regarding Age Of Electric. “I think Todd’s one of the greatest frontmen since David Lee Roth,” former Sinners bandmate Doc Ellis reiterated. In every other venture that Kerns has participated in, he has stood front and center, singing and playing guitar, his charisma always the brightest light on the stage. Even now as he plays bass with one of the most famous guitar players on the planet, Kerns is still the rock star. Flipping his long black hair, running across the stage and encouraging vocal affirmations from the crowd, he knows how to engage, interact and rouse up fans from the front row to the rafters. He is so beloved he has more fan sites on Facebook than any of his other cohorts, including Slash. When you meet him, he always has a smile and a hug for you. But don’t ever try to compete with him in rock & roll trivia: “For the record,” drummer Brent Fitz told me, “Todd won every fucking game. Then it wasn’t fun anymore (laughs)”
But the boss man trusts the 6’4 Canadian enough to have him sing one of GNR’s most famous songs, “Welcome To The Jungle,” as well as “Out To Get Me” and from Slash’s 2010 self-titled all-star album, the Lemmy-fronted “Doctor Alibi,” while giving Myles Kennedy a chance to take a breather. And Kerns has the vocal cords to pull it off, successfully. “It was one of those things where we sort of started as five people who didn’t know each other or whatever and then fell into a chemistry,” Kerns told me in our first interview in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2011 about being a member of Slash’s band. “We seem to vibrate at the right frequency with each other.” And Apocalyptic Love has been the proof in the pudding, scoring hit singles with “You’re A Lie,” “Bad Rain,” and “Standing In The Sun.”
But now with the Slash tour finally at an end, Kerns can get some much-needed sleep, recharge his batteries and be ready when the boss gives him a call to strap on his bass. In the meantime, he has laid an acoustic album into our laps that may say more about Todd Kerns than anything we’ve seen him do before.
Why did you call your second solo album Borrowing Trouble?
Borrowing trouble is an old term which refers to the bad habit of like, “I can take a trip to the store but what if I run out of gas on the way there? What if the traffic is bad? What if?” It’s like one of those things where you’re constantly sort of creating problems that aren’t there. As much as I wouldn’t say it’s one of my bad habits, borrowing trouble has always been one of my favorite phrases. The whole thing of like, isn’t it hard enough than creating your own issues with things at the same time? (laughs) But I think that a lot of the album sort of plays into a lot of that and some of the songs are sort of working through all the weird issues of the way life changes regardless. I’ve always used that term, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, cause it doesn’t matter whether you say, I’m going to do this or I’m going to do that, and all of a sudden things start to change and your life is hit with whatever is thrown at you and your goals often don’t change that much goal-wise but will bend and alter depending on what’s going on in your life. That’s why I think the ultimate sort of lesson in life is always, enjoy the journey, my friend, cause you don’t know what’s coming and where you’re going, so you may as well just ride it out.
There is a lot of emphasis on the lyrics. You’ve gotten really serious.
I think so. I think generally the idea with a solo record is that it becomes more introspective. But I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that when you take away everything and it’s just a voice and a guitar, it tends to be a lot more emphasis on what’s being said as opposed to how it’s being said. So sometimes I think it probably comes off a lot more serious. But it is more serious, the theme of the record and the nature of those songs are a bit more serious. I think every artist, using the term loosely, has to have fun aspects and serious aspects and everything in between. There’re some things I consider pretty fun on there.
But there’s a lot of thinking. You’re not singing about Gwen Stefani.
(laughs) Right, right, well, you know, there’s a lot of thinking that goes into those songs [by the Sin City Sinners] too but it comes very naturally to sort of be that kind of fun aspect of it. And with the Sinners, it would be weird to have a band that is sort of like the party Vegas band to suddenly start including songs that are very serious. I mean, we could scale those things back and there are relatively serious things within there but dealing with them in sort of a more fun way. I think in this record it was a lot more introspective-y singer-songwriter type stuff. But at the same time, I think that everybody has that inside of them when they write music, or any sort of art. They have times where, this goes on the fun pile and this goes on the serious pile. This just happens to be the serious collection of songs.
So is that why you made it as bare bones as you did?
There were multiple reasons for that. Part of it was to do with scheduling. I’ve always wanted to do a bare bones kind of record. It’s what you would call an acoustic record even though I don’t think it’s a 100% acoustic record. But I’ve always wanted to do one and as a creative person you’re kind of constantly feeling creative even though you’re on the road and you’re busy and you’re working. And I thought, well, I’ll come back to town and do what I do, which is play music, and next thing you know I’ve got a bunch of acoustic things kind of floating around and it sort of made sense to, “You know what, I’ll do that acoustic record I’ve always wanted to do,” cause I can do it without having to sort of really elaborately plan out how I’m going to do a full rock record. I could have waited but I think it just made sense timing wise. It was this strange sort of turn of events as far as, “I’ve always wanted to make an acoustic record” and then touring with Ginger Wildheart and then getting into the whole PledgeMusic thing became a big part of the day-to-day vernacular. And then my friend Greg passing away and all these things kind of came into play and took these sort of loose ideas floating around and put them in an actual sort of focus.
Was it hard with some of these songs being very emotional?
Some of the songs are older and a lot of them came from difficult places. “Hey Summer” has some heavy aspects but it’s still very hopeful. The same thing can be said about “You Can Always Go Home,” which was a difficult song in terms of being a bit lost. But I think at the same time I always think there’s hope within there. There’s a difference between being dark-sounding songs, woe-is-me kind of songs, but there’s always a sort of aspect of still looking for the silver lining within it. But I think a lot of people have reacted to it, and that’s important to me. People get something out of it. So even if it is, “Hey, party, chicks, booze, good times,” people, of course, will get something out of that but I think people also have those moments and those days where it’s like Borrowing Trouble becomes the perfect record as the soundtrack of whatever you’re going through. And I think that that is one of the most universal things about being human is that there are times where all of us go through, and none of these things are unique experiences, in a general sense, like heartbreak or whatever they are. These are things that we all go through.
How long did it take you to get it all done?
In the actual man hours, it wasn’t very long at all. To record it, cause there was a day or two here, a day or two there, just over a whole bunch of time, it really wasn’t that much time to actually record it. But I also had to sort of commit to the idea that I’m going to record these things and these are very naked songs as far as their very naked subject matter, and I’m going to present it very naked, presentation-wise. So I felt it needed the sort of authenticity of it being presented, performance-wise, not being corrected and not being slicked up, cause you’re so programmed by your own sort of perfection within ourselves to try and make sure something sounds good or make sure when I put something out that it’s the best it can be. But at the same time, I think sometimes we sort of lose track of the fact that just because it sounds perfect it doesn’t mean that it is, that it’s conveying what it needs to convey. And I think that looking back at the older recordings and I’ve spent a lot of time with things like Bob Dylan and Neil Young and those kind of things, when it comes to the acoustic kind of stuff that I like, they’re raw and what we’d probably correct today within those recordings, to me, would ruin those things. So for me, I had to kind of take a step back and go, I’m going to leave that as it is.
It’s the ambience like on those old vinyl records we love so much.
Yeah, exactly. That stuff just doesn’t really exist anymore. It exists within the indie community. I think a lot of bands or a lot of artists, they’re not as concerned with the perfection aspect and I think that is a lot of what still translates to kids today is the thing that they’re hearing something with some authenticity. That’s a very dangerous word to get into when we talk about music but there is a certain amount of like sanding off of rough edges and shining things up and presenting them in a sort of fancy way. To me, it’s like there’s always a balance. It may sound great but you want it to convey some sort of emotion. The reaction I’ve gotten from Borrowing Trouble, even though it’s still kind of trickling out, has been nothing like people sending me very deep sort of messages about what they’re connecting to.
And that to me is kind of the whole reason I did it. It’s never been about selling gazillions of records and buying a fucking power boat or something (laughs). It’s, I want to make music and put it out there, and this has kind of allotted me the best situation because so much of my intention is in this world with Slash and Myles and the guys that it kind of lends me to sort of do whatever I want to do on the side. And this was one of those times. I couldn’t think of a reason NOT to do it, once I lined up the PledgeMusic thing, the “I always wanted to do an acoustic record,” and all the things that kind of came into play. There’re always reasons not to do things. There’s always a sort of no one’s going to like it, I’m not going to sell any and I’m going to lose my shirt. But these are the kinds of things that, well, I may as well get a day job (laughs).
But this feeds your soul and keeps you going.
Yeah, I think so. I think you have to do these things. It’s like one of those things where I try to encourage in almost anybody I know. It’s like even if you do have a job and a regular life, it’s like every single person I know in my life and my friends and family, they have what they’re doing but there’s always something they wanted to do or things that they want to do but got kind of lost within the complexity of how life gets. I’m like, “Dude, you got to find fucking time for that. You’ve got to figure out how.” I know so many guys in my life who’ve begun a book and then stopped, and things like that.
My friend Greg died and it was like one of those things where there’re so many multiple levels that go on within dealing with someone passing away. But the scariest thing to me was the idea of, cause you can’t help but take a look at yourself because we’re all so self-involved no matter what we do anyway, but to kind of go, shit, if I was facing this tomorrow I don’t think I would be that worried about how much money I had in my bank account or how much property I own. I would think to myself, I should have recorded more music, I should have been more creative, I should have done more and put more out there; as much as you think, I should have spent more time with my family and I should have done those things as well. But from what I do and who I am as a musician, I think that’s sort of propelled me since then. Borrowing Trouble feels like a starting point to whatever the next thing is. And I think that doing it myself was the first step.
Were you surprised by how fast you met your goal at PledgeMusic?
Yes, yes, I really was. I started modestly and I intended to do it anyway. My intention was to always record an acoustic record and make it available on the website and to my friends and people who follow what I do. So when it came up, it was like, that was part of the reason I started to do an acoustic record too, was that I could do it relatively modestly budget-wise. But then people were like, now that you’ve got 100% we should really start driving, cause you can go beyond, and we were like 250% or something like that by then, but I was like, why, why should I get out there and wave a flag about let’s raise more money? Other than the fact that part of it was going to charity, of course that was a big deal. But making 100%, I was just flabbergasted that anybody was that interested. And it was all based on pre-orders. Some people don’t really understand the whole thing where you’ve got to go and ask for money. It’s not the way I looked at it. It was kind of like, I’m making a record, do you want to buy it?
I keep thinking I wish that had happened when I was a kid. I wish that Guns N Roses or somebody would have come along and said, “Hey man” and I’d been like, “Are you kidding me? Of course I want to be involved in that.” But it’s a different time now. The record industry is a different animal altogether. Like, we sit and talk with corporate types all the time who work in the industry and their entire sort of infrastructure of how it’s done is like, if it doesn’t involve getting rich or making any money doing it, then it doesn’t make any sense to them. I’m like, it was never about making money to me in the first place. I just like playing music so the fact that I’m able to keep the lights on and keep food on the table is more than my goal really.
Where can people get your CD?
There’s iTunes, CDBaby, www.toddkerns.com. As of August, it’ll officially be available everywhere. Vinyl will be coming in August. An onslaught of stuff (laughs)
So now that the album is out and the tour is basically over, besides going home and sleeping, what are you going to do?
Well, there’s going to be a lot of that (laughs). I’m going to Vancouver right away. My brother is getting married so I’ll be in Canada for most of August. It’s going to be great. But I really am going to take some time. For all the grandiose flag waving that I’ve always done, the sort of rah-rah-rah, I’m going to keep working and I rock all the time, that whole thing that has sort of been like the Todd Dammit flag, is definitely going to take a break, for a couple of months anyway. You just get kind of, not necessarily burned out, because I love playing music and it’s a big part of who I am, but there’s also a sort of, it’s good to step away from things cause you’re so subjective to everything, and when you can step back and get that objectivity back and look at your life and look at what’s going on and be able to kind of like take a step back. I still want to try and do something maybe touring-wise with this. I will definitely do the odd show here and there with the Borrowing Trouble thing in and around Vegas, but I’ve kind of taken a hiatus from the Sinners only because I was so fucking spread thin and the Slash world was so full-on (laughs).
It’s like people don’t really understand that when we do this, it’s like your whole life is immersed in this. I made the mistake on the first batch of tours where I would go home and I immediately plugged myself back in, so it was like it wasn’t really a break. For probably two years I went like full-straight. I was on the road for two years straight and then I basically hit a wall of like, wow. So basically this year, 2013, was the year where I said, I’ve got to kind of take the time for myself cause it’s just too much. You kind of feel like you’re giving as much as you can to each thing but you’re probably only making a 50% or 70% mark of what you’re giving and you kind of feel like you’re not doing enough. So I’d rather focus on what I can do the best I can do and then take that break. But physically, everyone needs that break anyway. Now it’s been basically three years of solid touring, even though we made a record in there as well. But that’s exhausting too. People don’t understand that rehearsal and recording can be very exhausting. That’s a whole other side of your brain mentally. So I’ll probably take a couple of months and just kind of kick around, play the odd show here and there, and around October I’m thinking of firing up a Canadian tour. Then, honestly, before you know it, we’ll be in the studio.
You’ve already heard something about recording a new Slash album?
Oh yeah, yeah, we’re working towards that now already. There will be a quiet period. Myles has his Alter Bridge record coming out, which will be a giant percent of his focus, but the rest of us, it’ll be basically the way it was a few years ago, almost a year and a half ago, whenever the Apocalyptic Love thing started to hook up. Myles was doing his thing and we were slowly cooking up our thing and it kind of came together. It basically may end up a repeat of that exact same scenario. We’ll definitely be in rehearsal writing mode late 2013. For 2014, I have no idea how all that’s going to play out. I just recently read a tweet about Slash saying that we’re going to have a new record out in early 2014.
Todd, you could just turn around and ask him.
(laughs) Yeah, well, he’s so funny. We talk about it all the time but that’s the thing about Slash though. Almost anything he says, as unrealistic as it sounds, is completely attainable because he’s fucking superman (laughs)
The last few times we talked you guys were playing rock & roll trivia and you were beating everybody. What has been the fun activity on the bus this time?
Our activities these days are pretty much movies and hanging out. It’s a lot more of a casual hang now. It’s a pretty tight family. We started with a certain group of people and it’s sort of whittled down to the people that it is now, or whittled up to the people it is now. And we’re strangely close and strangely family. Like the amount of history we have together is not as long as some relationships in our lives. In your life or my life or whatever, you have ten years with somebody and a couple of years with somebody but it’s just the amount of time we’ve been together, it’s like three years is a long time to spend in each other’s pocket. Three and a half.
So if they put the band in a reality show, what would be the quirkiest things people would find out about you guys?
(laughs) I think they’d be really surprised how, well, the three of us, the Conspirators, are usually inseparable. I mean, we spend time together because we have guitar shop, comic shop, record shop, every single day is the same thing, we’re looking for the same stuff. I think it’d probably be the fucking most boring reality show of all time (laughs). I think they would probably prod me out to the front of it because I’m the loudest one of the bunch. Within a casual setting, I’m the loudest one. Frank is sort of right behind me. Brent Spitz is Spock, he’s the thoughtful one, pretty quiet, but the most social of us in it’s own way. Slash is probably a million times more well-read and well-spoken than anybody expects. Well, I don’t know what people expect, actually. I’ve always wondered that because in my own perceptions Slash was always sort of like the big rock & roll animal with a bottle of Jack Daniels. But he’s actually like one of the most intelligent people I know. And Myles is a lot more shy than you would think he is. But sometimes I think his shyness is based on his own sort of controlling in his personality as far as he’s very aware of his voice and all that sort of stuff.
If you had to write your autobiography today, what would you title it?
(laughs) Today? It’s funny cause my usual one is called Waiting For Brent Fitz: The Todd Kerns Story (laughs) And which is funny because he probably waits for me just as much as I wait for him.
Now, you usually blog about what you’re reading. What rock & roll book have you read lately that you really enjoyed and thought was really well written, found out stuff you didn’t know?
The Pete Townshend one is amazing cause that was the first band that I really connected with. The Peter Criss one was ok. I got a bunch cause everybody knows I read so at Christmas I get a stack of books. But the Townshend one had a lot of far-reaching stuff for me as far as like how well it was written and how it was written by him as opposed to usually it’s somebody else. But Pete wrote it and I’m not surprised because he’s that kind of guy.
Are you going to write one? You have great stories.
My intention is to release the blogs. Like, I’m going to finish up this tour and wrap up, well, I’m not really sure when I’m going to end it but we’re going to try and put that out in book form so that all the blogs will come out probably before the next record, I’m thinking. And then the next book will start with the writing of whatever the next record is. But I’ve always thought about at some point writing a book but it seems kind of silly to write a book when you’re not quite as well known as the Rod Stewarts (laughs). Eventually someday it will all come together. It’s always kind of floating around in my head because I read so much, not just biographies. But you have stories and you think about things and how you would present that because, well, you could probably pick anybody, like the bus driver who works nine-to-five locally and he could tell his life story and it’d probably be pretty damn interesting.
I think just the fact that someone telling the story of their life and what happened and then how things have gone, can be a very interesting one. Who knows, I’ve been very blessed. I was blessed before the Slash thing came along but it has been so far reaching now as far as like every country in Europe and Australia and Asia and South America and all these different places that follow what we do, it’s been really kind of overwhelmingly fascinating. Like when the PledgeMusic campaign was going on, a lot of my friends were like, “Well, I’m sure you have the Canadian interests” and I was like, yeah, but I think I was more surprised, not more surprised but very struck with how far-reaching it was. People from all over the world were interested and it’s like, wow.
Speaking of Canada, you were famous when you were still living there fronting bands and now you’re famous again with Slash. How is it different the second time around?
It’s different now because I think when you’re younger you are so hungry for that. It’s interesting to admit and to look at it sort of objectively. You don’t really think about it when you’re in the middle of it. You spend so long working so hard at what you do making music and doing what you want to do, you like to tell yourself you don’t give a fuck what everybody thinks, and generally you don’t. But when somebody tells you you’re good or tells you that that song is great, you kind of hold on to it, you know what I mean. As much as we always talk about how ninety-nine people can tell you you’re wonderful and one person can tell you you’re terrible, it’s that one person you’ll focus on, which is just kind of a human flaw I think (laughs).
I think that by the time I’d come into the Slash camp, I was so much more comfortable being me. And the highs and lows and ups and downs that go on in a person’s life, I didn’t need it as much. I know what I’m capable of, I know what my abilities are, I know my strengths and my own weaknesses, at least what I feel they are. So when someone gives you some positive feedback, you accept it and say thank you. It’s always good to hear. You’re always happy to hear someone enjoys what you do. But it’s not something that fills some sort of void inside you like you NEED someone to tell you how wonderful you are. When you’re younger, you’ve been knocked around, you’ve been struggling, playing in shitty bars cause no one likes your band (laughs) but slowly you get better and slowly you get more of an audience. So by the time people are giving you any sort of positivity, you hold on to it like it’s a fucking life raft. Now, the positive support is good to have around you but it’s not like I cling to it like I’ll die without it kind of thing. Even though I don’t know what I would do without it (laughs). We’re so surrounded by positivity that we’re very spoiled.
This has been a big year for the Rolling Stones, celebrating fifty years. In your opinion, what made them so great?
I think it’s probably the first generation of watching that happen. I was talking about that recently how before The Beatles there weren’t really bands, it wasn’t really like this group of guys are a thing. Usually it was just like singers – Bobby Darrin or Elvis or whoever. So watching four or five men stay together for their entire fucking lives, for fifty years, is kind of bizarre really. But I think that that’s one of those things where they’ve managed to put out good quality shit for a long time. They’ve managed to keep the mystique. It’s hard to say. The Rolling Stones were so big that if there had been a lull where they were not successful anymore, would they still be around? I don’t know. Maybe they would in some sort of other facet but when you’re as big as the Rolling Stones are it’s like, of course they’re going to stay together. That’s like saying why would a business as successful as, take your pick, why is it still around? Cause it’s successful. Not to say they’re only together because they’re successful but I’m pretty sure that if you’ve had enough of somebody’s bullshit (laughs) and the band isn’t as successful it once was, you go, fuck you, and you’re out of there. That’s happened many times but it always becomes a thing like, look, this thing is a gargantuan success, let’s keep it rolling. To me, it’s that Mick and Keith magic and as long as those two are alive it will still keep going. I don’t know what would kill it at this point other than death (laughs). I don’t want that to be as dark as it sounds but I just mean like, why wouldn’t they just keep going until the end.
Live photos by Leslie Michele Derrough & Jo Anna Jackson
