How did you first get into Bob Dylan?

I was young and heavily into the British Invasion, but the babysitter had a boyfriend who was a folkie; he had Eric Anderson, Dave Van Ronk, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, and of course Dylan. I kinda dug it all. The first album, where he was more of an interpreter, with “Song to Woody” was just a glimmer of what what was to come.

By the second album it was brutally apparent he was going to outshine everybody. Then I kinda got into the whole “folk-rock” thing. It was all over the radio. Simon and Garfunkel, The Byrds, even Sonny and Cher. I still dig that stuff, especially when it got garage band sounding; The Seeds, The Leaves, The Beau Brummels...

How has he influenced your music?

He influenced everybody’s music. Especially those that have non-traditional voices and want to take it in a more “literary” direction.

How many times have you seen him play live? What were those shows like?

Five. Well, I love him live. I stopped going with other people because I didn't want to hear stupid comments about what they expected him to do. I enjoy him better alone. Never saw him with The Band, saw him with G.E. Smith a couple of times -- that was pretty uninspired but his phrasing was always masterful and inventive, very Miles Davis like. And his thing with Tom Petty was cool. But the current band with Charlie Sexton is awesome, particularly around the time of the movie Masked and Anonymous. (I'll go to my grave saying it's a great movie... check the dialog.)

Did it take you awhile to get into Bob Dylan, given his strange singing style?

No. I was too young. It just seemed like that's what artists did. I was lucky I guess nobody made a big deal out of it.

What’s the closest you’ve ever gotten to him?

I've never worked with him, and I feel bad for the guy that questions like this are asked. This is why the “hood is up.”

Is there a period of Dylan’s music you think is underrated or overrated?

He's writing some of his best stuff now.

What do you admire about Bob Dylan?

There are no apologies for genius.

Read more 30 Days of Dylan.

Visit Americansongwriter.com daily during our 30 Days Of Dylan countdown to read exclusive interviews with artists on Dylan, exclusive audio and video, and more.

Though James Carr is probably best known for cutting the first (and some still say, best) version of Chips Moman and Dan Penn’s soul standard “Dark End Of The Street,” Carr, a troubled man who would not last long in the limelight, found his first real success in April 1966 with “You Got My Mind Messed Up,” written by O.B. McClinton, a student at Mississippi’s Rust College who would later find some success as a country singer known as the Chocolate Cowboy.

Carr was a Memphis contemporary of Otis Redding, borrowing generously from the Stax star’s vocal and production style. If “You Got My Mind Messed Up” sounds familiar, that’s because it bares a close melodic resemblance to “That’s How Strong My Love Is” as Robert Gordon points out in a 1992 article about Carr for L.A. Weekly. Redding’s 1965 soul smash was actually written by Carr’s friend and manager, Roosevelt Jamison, and previously recorded by O.V. Wright and released on the startup label, Goldwax.

In the early ‘60s, Jamison was an aspiring singer and songwriter who scouted talent for Goldwax and also worked as a hematologist. In a story with much of the typical aplomb of music business origins, Jamison introduced Carr to Goldwax’s Quinton Claunch one night at midnight on the label owner’s front door step. After hearing demo tapes in his living room, Claunch was convinced and signed the singer to a deal with the Memphis label.

“Messed Up” was Carr’s third single for the label, released in April 1966, and, as Jamison tells Peter Guralnick in Sweet Soul Music, would be the song that would begin to “make James’s dreams come true.”

Most of Carr’s early sessions for Goldwax were produced by Chips Moman, who would turn out to be another integral player in the singer’s career. The Georgia-born producer, songwriter, and guitarist had left Stax in 1961, subsequently opening a new studio in Memphis called American Sound. But Moman during this period was mostly “out on a wet one,” as Gordon so aptly describes in his book, It Came From Memphis. Some accounts place Carr’s early sessions at Sam Phillips’ new studio, Phillips Recording Service, which the legendary producer opened in 1960 at 639 Madison Avenue. In Roben Jones’ Memphis Boys: The Story of American Studios, Spooner Oldham recalls the late 1966 session for “Dark End Of The Street” being cut at Hi Studios.

One surety about “You Got My Mind Messed Up” is Reggie Young’s guitar playing. Moman had begun assembling a house band for American that would become famous as the Memphis Boys, including Young on guitar, along with bassists Tommy Cogbill and Mike Leech, drummer Gene Chrisman, and keyboardists Bobby Emmons and Bobby Wood. On “Messed Up,” Young’s guitar recalls Steve Cropper’s spiky licks, while the horns sound a lot like Stax’s Memphis Horns, which as Guralnick points out, they were.

“Baby, you got my mind messed up,” sings Carr. “Somebody just gotta help me.” Sadly, for Carr, who suffered from bipolar disorder and had social anxiety and motivation problems, the words would prove to be all too true.

As the ‘60s continued, Carr was increasingly difficult to work with, failing to produce material in the studio. By 1969, Goldwax was out of business and, though he left behind some great recordings, the man who some had once called the “world’s greatest soul singer” was on his way to being a might-have-been in soul music history.

"You've Got My Mind Messed Up"

Said I wasn't gonna
Tell nobody else
But I just can't keep it
All to myself now

For as long as I've
Been running around
I finally met a little girl
That really got me down now

Baby, you've got
My mind messed up
Little girl, little girl
You sure got my
Mind messed up now

I go to bed alone
And I can't sleep
Sit down at the table
Ooh, Lord, I can't eat

Somebody, please, please
Help me now, oh, oh, oh

Sugar plum dancing on in my mind
Every day you're with me
Seem like Valentine's now

I walked a rainbow, Lord
And I chained the moon
Walk around the world
And get back before noon

Baby, you've got
My mind messed up
Darling, sure got my
Mind messed up now

Eyes wide open, Lord
And I can't see
Anywhere the woman go
She can lead for me

Somebody just gotta
Just gotta help me
Oh, oh wee, oh, now

Baby, you've got
My mind messed up now
Sure got my mind
Messed up now

You my love
With all of my heart
I'll do anything
You want me to do

For you
I'd climb the highest mountain
Baby, for you
I'd swim the deepest sea

Anywhere you go
You can lead for me

I, I love you
Oh, I love you
I, I love you, baby

Written by O.B. McClinton

How did you first get into Bob Dylan?

I first got into The Byrds and his songs via them. When I was around 12, Traveling Wilburys released their record, and since I was such a huge Beatles fan, I got into him properly via the George connection. And pretty soon I was a huge fan of his own records.

How has he influenced your music?

In many ways I think. I love wordy songs and Dylan and Costello where my main influences in getting into trying a similar thing myself. Just the sound of his words, the rhythm of them and how he phrases and make them swing. But also the actual “color” of the words and the mood they put you in.

I love when he's angry, bitter and really mean. I sometimes try to write really angry songs and Dylan's are the best in the field. But he can also be sad and have a pathos and combine emotion and cleverness in an unsurpassed way. As a songwriter these are all things you aim for but seldom reach.

He was a really good political writer so you can understand how the left mourned when he didn't want to be their spokesperson. He mixes up references from past and present, politics, society, personal matters and culture in to a whole mixed bag that is his own objective distorted view of the world. That also something I see myself doing from time to time, often in the songs I like the most. I would love to be in his camera. He really paints and projects with images and wordplay what he sees around him. As a kid I could put on the earphones and see a Dylan-movie or read a Dylan-novel if you'd like. Even the ostensibly least understandable songs makes you go places you wouldn't dream up by yourself.  All good music takes you places but I think with Dylan in his prime the overwhelming amount of words just drew you in and made you wanna stay forever.

I also love his voice and harmonica, the way he made rock adult with his folk and blues influences and essentially created this unique sound with the double keyboard attack and soulful backing. I can honestly say he's one of the artists I listened the most to over the years and I never seem to tire. Obviously he made me start finger picking and pick up a harmonica for starters. I will never forget the first time I heard the "Highway 61"-album in a library as a kid. For me it was a personal revolution when I finally "got it" after the initial rejection earlier. And that album was already over 20 years old then.

How many times have you seen him play live? What were those shows like?

I think four times. They have been good - especially the two shows I saw in the mid-90's - but not mind-blowing. My impression of him as live artist is more influenced by the 1966 footage and music I've heard, but also some of the stuff from the mid-70's like Hard Rain, which is astonishing.

Did it take you a while to get into Bob Dylan, given his strange singing style?

In fact, yes. I heard him when I was really small on the radio and I didn’t like it at all. But I did remember it, so he left an impression.

What’s the closest you’ve ever gotten to him/what was it like working with him?

The closest I ever got to him was the front row at the Roskildefestival in 1995.

Do you have a favorite Bob Dylan quote or lyric?

I love "Positively 4th Street": "I wish that for just one time / you could stand inside my shoes / you’d know what a drag it is / to see you."

Not one of his cleverer songs but as I said I love when he's a dick.

Also "Idiot Wind" where the anger is a bit more nuanced but no less biting when it bites. "Dear :andlord" is another one I come to think of I really like. "Hard Rains Gonna Fall" of course. "My Back Pages", "Desolation Row" - really this question is impossible. There are too many sides of his stories and you'd have to pick a different favorite from each of his different type of songs.

But the very first thing that comes to mind for some reason is the end of "Ballad in plain D": "Ah, my friends from the prison / they ask unto me / 'how good, how good does it feel to be free?' / And I answer them most mysteriously / 'are birds free from the chains of the skyway?'"

I love that sad and very personal "end-of-an-affair" song.

What are some of your favorite songs or albums, and why?

I'm a cliché that way - I really, really love his classic albums and songs. The ones I keep returning to are Another Side Of, Bringing It All Back Home and Desire. I also really love Oh Mercy and Time out Of Mind. They have a vulnerability lacking in some earlier work. If I gun to head had to pick just three, I'd say "Blood On The Tracks," "John Wesley Harding" and "Blonde on Blonde."

Especially "Blonde On Blonde." It's something about the sound and arrangements on that record, not just the songs. It's just perfect in every sense; warmer and more melancholic than "Highway 61", richer and more pop than the starker stuff coming after, more grown up and world weary than the early folk stuff and with a surrealist magical shine on top. I kind of get he followed it up with a bike accident. And a suede jacket have never looked better than on the cover. It was a peak.

And my favorite song on it would be "Sad Eyed Lady of The Lowlands". It has one of Dylan’s best melodies, the performance of the musicians is so understated and sensitive but still pretty full. The imagery is pretty weird and tangled and still you feel you totally understand it. I'm sure he wrote it in 5 minutes. I'm glad it's so long. I could listen to a version that would last a day.

Is there a period of Dylan’s music you think is underrated or overrated?

The late 70's and early 80's period is probably a little underrated. Albums like Street Legal, Slow Train Coming and Infidels have some great songs. I also kind of like Nashville Skyline, and it's usually not viewed as great.

Overrated - I couldn't say any period really. His worse albums are usually the ones no one really like anyway. Maybe some of his more recent ones are not as great as some people say but they are not bad either - not including the Christmas album.

What do you admire about Bob Dylan?

I probably answered that already.

Peter Moren of Peter Bjorn and John Covers "Dear Landlord"

On April 3, Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson will release Thick As A Brick 2, the followup to 1972's beloved prog opus Thick As A Brick (an album comprised of two long, interconnected songs). In this extensive interview, rock's most famous flautist talks to American Songwriter about the sequel's genesis, its parallels to the original, his distinctive vocal style, and whether or not he believes he can win another Grammy.

With the recent Aqualung reissue and now Thick As A Brick 2, this a pretty exciting time to be a Jethro Tull fan.

It’s a really exciting time for me too. Aqualung and Thick As A Brick are two of my favorite records for the simple reason that from an artistic and a personal songwriting point of view, they’re very different in terms of their musical and lyrical content. They both represent a period when I got brave enough to take a few risks with different topics, different subjects, and different ways of writing music.

So the two albums are very dear to me in sort of artistic sense. I have studiously avoided, over the years, to recreate Thick As A Brick, either in terms of playing it all on stage, or venturing down that slightly more prog-rock course of musical endeavor.

And I was pretty much maintaining that position until sometime late in 2010, when I met up with an old acquaintance by the name of Derek Shulman. He used to be the singer of the band Gentle Giant, a prog-rock band that had quite a bit of success in the late '70s. He then went on to be a successful record producer in the USA, signing bands like Nickelback and others.

When I met him, he strongly suggested his idea of doing a sequel to Thick As A Brick, which I reacted to with my usual disdain and negative thoughts, but we had another conversation probably later on that year. Somehow the idea just popped up in a conversation about, “I wonder what the eight-year-old Gerald Bostock [Thick As A Brick's fictional protagonist] would be doing today. Would the fabled newspaper [seen in the album art] still exist?

It was the thought of bringing that idea into the current context. First of all, how do our lives develop? What chance encounters, what interventions shape our lives? It’s what we go through from childhood onwards. That, in itself, began to pose some interesting parallels with my own thinking about my own background, my development in school, my early career, my choice of doing things along the way.

So it suddenly coalesced, in a period of hours rather than days, into a full-blown concept for writing a new album. Once I had that, the whole picture changed. I thought, “I think I can do this.” I just kept it in the back of my mind until the end of January last year and started to try to evolve it as more of a detailed picture – just laying out the bones of it on a piece of paper. Then I started writing some lyrics and I already had one or two pieces of music by then that I thought I could bring into play and so I just kind of got on with it. Within about two weeks, I had the album pretty much done in the sense of the lyrics and the music.

I went off to Munich and spent the day with my guitar player friend. We made some demos of the whole thing in a few hours. Then I came back and spent another day in the studio home of our keyboard player and we started to work on the scores of that. We put it all into the software program called Sibelius, created a huge musical score of the whole album which was given out to the other band members in March last year.

Then we went on the road for six months and didn’t give it too much thought, other than we played two or three of the songs live on stage to try them out. The lyrics were changed a little bit and titles and things to avoid giving the game away to the public. We then went back to it at the end of November. We finished the Scandinavian tour, came back, took a few days off, and then convened for rehearsals. We did about a week or so of rehearsal and ten days in the studio and then a few days of mixing.

We finished my part of it all right about the 3rd or 4th of December. Then we spent a few days working with Stephen Wilson, the man behind the band Porcupine Tree who remixed the Aqualung album last year and he remixed the Thick As A Brick album too, ready for release, or re-release later this year. It was all wrapped up and done well before Christmas. That’s the story.

How does that compare to the amount of time it took you to come up with the music and lyrics for the original album?

It’s all identical. I think the only difference is that with Thick As A Brick 2, I wrote it all and then there was a period of six months before we recorded it. With Thick As A Brick 1, I was kind of writing it and rehearsing it pretty much on the same day. I would write the music in the morning, go to the rehearsal room in the afternoon, work with the guys into the evening, and then we did that every day for about ten days. Then we went and recorded it in Morgan Studios in London in a period of about ten days. We spent a few days mixing it and that was done. It was pretty much the same amount of intense work that’s involved in this one.

So yeah, remarkable similarities really, in terms of the band being in the studio working together playing it together almost like a live experience. It was extensively all-together, not fragmented because it’s a big piece of music with a lot of joins, sections, reiterations, developments, and utilizing themes that crop up a few times in different ways on the album. It was the kind of work that, as musicians, you can get your teeth into. You can sort of tackle it in a bigger way. You’re not just learning a four-minute song. It’s 50 odd minutes of music.

It was quite an intense time for all the musicians just as it was back in 1972. Just like in 1972, I think a lot more time was spent doing the artwork, marketing, and promotional blends. The newspaper is now online. It’s a community Internet magazine really for the imaginary small town communities.

So are all the songs connected? Are there breaks in between on the new record?

Well, there are ID points. I wrote the music very much for the idea that there could be ID points where you were able to listen to it in separate pieces, so in this day in age of iTunes and digital retailers, you can find it. So there are ID points. I don’t really like to call them songs or tracks but I decided I would treat it kind of like songs.

But in reality, things repeat and develop so it’s not really a collection of songs. It is more of a continuous flow piece of music. One thing leads to another. But you can group areas into certain subjects and topics, where two or three pieces kind of hold together on the same idea for a while. I don’t really like to talk about them being songs or tracks, but I recognize the fact that other people do. I kind of constructed it in order to put these ID points on so when you hit the forward button on your player or computer or CD player or iPod, you can at least go forward or backward to the section that you want to hear. Of course, you can buy them on iTunes as separate pieces – you don’t have to buy the whole album.

That would be kind of ridiculous though.

Tell that to Pink Floyd. They somewhat famously recently refused to let Dark Side Of The Moon be unbundled for iTunes and said it could only be sold as a full piece. You have to buy the whole album or nothing at all. It seems to me not realistic. I think if you go and look at the majority of great classical works, you’ll find them unbundled in one form or another on iTunes or another provider. So I don’t see why we shouldn’t be doing that now with contemporary pop music, even if it is a bigger work. I think you’ve got to make it accessible, practically speaking, to people who listen to it in terms of today’s equipment.

I mean anything is better than the awful noisy empty grooves between tracks - lifting the needle and trying to find the track again, only to hear those awful noises and realize you’ve just taken another 20 plays off the life of your vinyl record by dropping the needle in the wrong place, or too clumsily. So we should be grateful for the digital age.

The original Thick As A Brick was meant as a parody of prog-rock, right?

It remains as a parody of the concept prog-rock album of its day. Because at that point, there were several bands producing rather elaborate and sometimes pompous, overblown productions of music, which were sometimes a mixture of great ideas and too much showing off. Those were bands like Yes and King Crimson and the early Genesis. it wasn’t my favorite kind of music, but I enjoyed quite a lot of it. They were great musicians and did some great stuff, but it just seemed a convenient time to create a bit of a spoof of that grandiose concept album.

So I wrote something that was designed to be just that, from the starting premise of an 8-year-old boy writing this piece of rather impenetrable and surreal poetry. I mean if you buy into that, then you buy into the whole thing. I thought the joke was kind of obvious, but I guess for a lot of people it wasn’t so obvious. If it was, they didn’t really care. They just liked the idea of it anyways. So it didn’t really have to be explained unduly and in some countries, I suppose people still think of Thick As A Brick as being literally what it says on the packaging. But that was always going to happen to some little degree.

I would imagine most people understand that it is a spoof. It’s a fabricated and observed notion. But the follow up album is based on an extrapolation of that idea, not just Gerald Bostock but anyone – you know, what happens to you in life. It’s perhaps a rather more somber and serious, sometimes more dark, follow up to the original Thick As A Brick. It is what you expect 40 years down the line. It’s a grown-up piece of work. It has some dark and unhappy moments in there. It’s not all fun and games.

Online at StCleve.com, it's more lighthearted and definitely the spoof every bit as it was back then of parochial country life. In fact, I will be inviting our fans to participate in a couple weeks time of writing their own stories for StCleve.com as correspondents We’re going to let some people appear online and they can write their own stories. We’ll pick a few of those each week and put them on our website to join in the fantasy of parochial country life in England. We’ll have to edit out the bad words and inappropriate photographs. We have to remember our responsibilities and we won’t let it overstep the mark of tastefulness.

]]> http://www.americansongwriter.com/2012/02/jethro-tulls-ian-anderson-on-thick-as-a-brick-2-the-grammys-and-more/feed/ 2 http://www.americansongwriter.com/2012/02/a-qa-with-the-frays-isaac-slade/ http://www.americansongwriter.com/2012/02/a-qa-with-the-frays-isaac-slade/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:31:10 +0000 Evan Schlansky http://www.americansongwriter.com/?p=77156
For their third album, Scars & Stories, "How To Save A Life" hitmakers The Fray turned to super-producer Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam) to give them a boost in the studio. We talked to Fray frontman Isaac Slade about his formative days studying songwriting at the University of Colorado, the inspiration behind the band's [...]]]>

For their third album, Scars & Stories, "How To Save A Life" hitmakers The Fray turned to super-producer Brendan O'Brien (Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam) to give them a boost in the studio. We talked to Fray frontman Isaac Slade about his formative days studying songwriting at the University of Colorado, the inspiration behind the band's latest single, and dealing with the critics.

Did you approach the songwriting on Scars & Stories differently than you have in the past?

Yeah, we abandoned self-doubt on this one, which could be a bad thing. [Laughs.] Time will tell if that was a bad idea, but our producer and our A&R guy both worked to push us out to sea a little bit. If the shore is conscious self-questioning created out of constant self-doubt, we are a couple miles off the shore from that on this record.

It must be hard to make a third record without repeating yourself but still capitalizing on what was successful on previous albums. Did you find that to be a challenge?

Yeah, but it’s the same challenge of taking a girl out on a third date. You don’t want to use the same lines as you did before, because hopefully they aren’t from a script, but they’re coming from a place of who you are. You can’t just wait ‘til the scary part of the movie and slowly put your arm around her too many times before she notices that’s how you always do it.

We tried to just keep that real sense of relationship that we have with our fans. And if the first record was a handshake, “Hi, how are ya,” the second record was probably coffee, and the third record was dinner and a movie. So we’ll see how it goes.

Was working with producer Brendan O’Brien a big confidence boost?

It is, man. He has a funny way of distracting you enough. By forcing the momentum to stay up, you don’t have time to question whether its good or not, you just swing for the ball as hard as you can and hope it hits the back wall.

Did he tell you stories about working with Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam?

Yeah, every couple days we would ask him what the hell it was like to make Blood Sugar Sex Magik, or working with Stone Temple Pilots, or what Eddie Vedder is really like. He’s a walking encyclopedia.

So what inspired the album’s first single, “Heartbeat?”

We were in Rwanda, standing around in a circle, just thinking and somebody was talking about watching this country come back to life. And [as I was holding hands with a refugee woman,] I felt her heartbeat. I couldn’t figure out if it was hers or mine, it was just an epic moment of realizing that the country was coming back to life in spite of every effort to kill it.

I met some incredible people there. I met the president, a girl behind the counter at the genocide museum, everybody in between, imagining the stories they all had. I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask them, but I wrote the song instead.

Do you usually write on piano?

It’s half and half probably. That song I started on guitar, and then I came back and wrote the rest of it on piano. I usually start the song staring at something, humming into my iPhone, and then I flesh it out on an instrument.

Does the band ever give you feedback on lyrics?

Absolutely. Typically Joe King and I write the lion’s share of the chords, melody, and lyrics, but nothing you’ve ever heard has gone through the Fray factory without every single person touching it.

Something Ben [our drummer] does a lot is we’ll be stuck without the chorus, and he listens through our demos like a historian. The guy’s amazing. We have all these crappy little voice recordings and Ben knows them better than we do. He’ll say, “I think we should try this one obscure verse idea that I found from 1992 for the chorus.”

That’s how "You Found Me" happened, actually. We were sitting around as songwriters, and Ben came in said, “I like that old piece about being lost or insecure or something. We should check that out.” And I didn’t think it would work ‘cause it felt non-engaging and vulnerable, and I wanted a big, epic chorus. But it ended up being perfect for it, this very inclusive concept of “we’re all in this together.”

A while back you decided to write non-religious lyrics, despite your strong ties to your faith. Do you still think that was the right move for your band?

Yes, sir, one-hundred percent. I’ve actually had the honor of meeting some of my old school heroes from the only songs I was allowed to listen to growing up. They’re amazing people and they write amazing songs for a very specific audience. But I always wanted us to be more like Spielberg or Norman Rockwell, just having enough of a sense of America that I can convey something in a universal enough way that a nine-year-old kid and a 63-year-old dad can understand together. And when you limit it to just one aspect of who you are, it can limit the mainstream appeal. So I’m really glad we got out of it.

“How To Save A Life” was a giant hit for you guys. Looking back on it now, do you think that was because it was so memorably catchy, or because of the lyrical content?

I think there are two ways to look at it. In college they always talked about the two ways to write a song: like Neil Young or like Paul Simon. Simon writes intensely crafted, labored songs, and they’re flawless. And then, on the opposite extreme you have Neil Young who goes out in the lightning storm with a big antenna and it just strikes him. He tries to capture it without getting killed.

Personally, I’m a combination. Like for “Heartbeat” I started with an experience in Rwanda. That was the initial lightning spark. Then I came back and crafted a song with Joe. It was the same way for “How to Save a Life.” You never know why certain songs get big and certain songs don’t, but “How to Save a Life” was definitely one of the most personally relevant songs that I’ve ever written. I’ve sung it thousands of times and it’s still fresh almost every day.

You studied songwriting in college?

Yeah, I went to University of Colorado at the Denver campus. It’s more of an industry-based music program, and I took a combination degree of studio producing, music business, and performance. You just don’t know what’s normal or extraordinary until you learn about the whole picture, from Elvis to The Cure and beyond. I had some of the most incredible professors. They were all lawyers and producers and publishers, so we heard the war stories. And I also learned that content is key, but you need to network. You need to know who’s making the decisions and if you like them enough to be friends with them in an authentic way. Breaking into that world is all about relationships, so I learned a lot from that experience. Four years I’ll never forget.

Despite your popularity, critics have been sometimes hard on your band. How does that affect you?

I have always thought of it as a good thing. You’re nobody until somebody hates you. I’ve also been a lot more concerned about fans than critics. To some extent I put my fans in the top spot, even above myself. Nothing against critics; I read magazines and I read blogs and listen to all kinds of critics to figure out what kind of music is out there that’s good, and what I want to listen to. I respect a lot of people who have never really gotten what we do. And maybe someday they will. That’ll be a bonus. But as long as our fans keep coming out to our shows and buying our record, I know we’re on the right track.

The Fray is streaming Scars & Stories on iTunes now, and will release the album February 7. It’s also available for presale now in a regular edition, and a deluxe edition including five cover songs. The band will also get to kick off Super Bowl XLVI with Lenny Kravitz at Lucas Oil Stadium, before embarking on a U.S. tour.

The Fray Tour Dates (Tickets on sale Feb. 3)
2/16 San Diego, CA @ House of Blues
2/18 Reno, NV @ Silvery Legacy Resort Casino
2/20 Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
2/21 Redding, CA @ The Cascade Theatre
2/22 Portland, CA @ Crystal Ballroom
2/24 Boise, ID @ Knitting Factory Concert House
2/25 Spokane, WA @ Knitting Factory Concert House
2/26 Vancouver, BC @ Orpheum
2/28 Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre
4/11 Providence, RI @ Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel
4/12 New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall
4/14 Mashantucket, CT @ MGM Grand Theater at Foxwoods
4/17 Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre
4/22 Asheville, NC @ Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
4/24 Louisville, KY @ Palace Theatre
4/25 Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
4/27 Monroe, LA @ Monroe Civic Center – Univ. of LA
4/28 Dallas, TX @ Palidium Ballroom
4/29 Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheatre
4/30 Houston, TX @ House of Blues
5/1 New Orleans, LA @ Tippitinas Uptown
5/3 Orlando, FL @ Hard Rock Live
5/4 St. Augustine, FL @ St. Augustine Amphitheater
5/8 St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant
5/11 Denver, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre