A million years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Tom Keifer. We met in 1988 during the Long Cold Winter tour when his band Cinderella was opening for Judas Priest. We were somewhere in the Midwest and I was hanging out with my friend, drummer Fred Coury for a couple of shows. I had never previously met Tom but I was certainly curious. During a few long bus rides we only spoke briefly but I came away with a distinct impressions.
Tom Keifer was musically gifted, well spoken, and a cut above the frontmen of the day. He obviously spent time crafting his songs, making them not only the kind of songs that stick in your head but also incorporating the best of his blues-driven talent. Keifer considered his words and spoke not deliberately but in a way that made you know he is both intelligent and well-researched. And while being a somewhat quiet man in person, he used all his skills to make his live shows engaging and memorable.
Since that time in 1988, Keifer has had musical success interspersed with intense personal trials. He has had to fight back from a debilitating vocal cord disorder and learn how to sing all over again. He has undergone six operations to repair damaged vocal cords and he now trains his voice at least an hour and a half to two hours a day, 365 days a year.
Keifer has weathered the storm and through it all is coming out on top. The proof of this is his latest aptly named album The Way Life Goes. Written and recorded over a period of more than 10 years, it is the musical validation of Keifer’s reemergence as a supremely accomplished artist.
I caught up with the singer while he was in Nashville and had the opportunity to speak to him about a range of subjects. From musical influences, the early days in Philadelphia, to the place of Spotify in the industry today, many subjects were covered. What follows is an interview with a talented performer and a music industry veteran. After a brief re-acquainting conversation, we jumped right in to the following Q/A.
~
It’s been a long time since the formation of Cinderella. For the new listeners and readers out there, in 100 words or less, from 1987 to 2013, from Night Songs to The Way Life Goes, what’s been the journey?
What’s been the journey? Wow! Well, starting with Night Songs, it felt like a tornado just came down and swooped us up and took us on this whirlwind ride. There’d been…you know obviously with any band, years of preparation that goes into this thing that appears to be an overnight success and certainly we got hit with that, and it was just immediate, after many years of writing and recording and developing our craft. And from that moment on, when that record was released through probably about 1991, Heartbreak Station, it was just amazing. This dream came true.
Then in the 90s, some things in the music industry changed and shifted. You know that happens with every decade – out with the old and in with the new. We had the grunge in Seattle movement that came through, a changing of the guard. So right around the mid-90s we parted ways with Mercury Records who’d put out our first four records, and the band started drifting apart and doing our own things.
I started thinking about a solo record at that point. I had started to write for it but had never actually started production and recording for the record until years later. It just kept getting put on the backburner for some reason. But I kept writing songs.
Finally around 2003, I started to record the record, actual production, independently of a label. Ten years later and here we are in present day! The Way Life Goes is out and Cinderella continues to be a touring act. We have great success with touring and our fans are still very supportive…and on the side here, now I’ve released this solo album. It’s another journey that I’ve been on, an adventure that’s been fun to share. So now I’m just looking forward to what’s around the next corner. That’s probably more than 100 words but that’s a brief synopsis of my history there (laughs).
You were born and bred in Philadelphia, correct?
Yes.
Can you describe the music scene or the club scene there when you were coming up in the early 80s? With your band Cinderella, a glam-metal then blues hard rock band, what were you competing with back then?
Well, you had two significantly different markets around the Philadelphia area. You had the Philadelphia in-town kinda vibe, then you had across the bridge in south Jersey, a whole different scene. It was more the hard rock/rock and roll scene. Philadelphia was a little more new wave — guys like Robert Hazard, Tommy Conwell. It was a different vibe, and obviously not a hard rock thing. They had some great artists there. So there were two different sides of the fence…. a lot of the scene in general was bands doing covers.
How did you get involved in the music scene?
You know, I started in high school playing in cover bands and a lot of that was over in South Jersey, just across the bridge from Philadelphia. There were a few places in Philadelphia that would have rock cover bands so that’s how I got my start and I quickly realized that if I wanted to make albums, LPs, like my heroes The Stones and Zeppelin and all that, I’d better start writing some music. So after years of banging around in the clubs doing covers I decided to pull out of that and start writing songs and that ultimately led to the formation of Cinderella.
Eventually we wanted to go back out and play live again. And it was difficult to play all-original. Most clubs wouldn’t have you. We were fortunate enough that there was a club in Northeast Philadelphia called the Empire Rock Club that would have all original bands one night a week. And there was a club in South Jersey, called the Galaxy, a club that would have all original bands, which became our home. So that’s where we got our start. At that point we were just trying to create music, write music, record music, and learn the art of recording. We’d play out a couple of times a month in those two clubs and we were pursuing a record deal.
Your music is inherently blues-drenched. Other than the Stones and their contemporaries, what bluesmen were your influences on guitar and/or vocals?
YMy first exposure to anything blues, was the LP, B.B. King Live At The Regal, from 1964. Until then, I was a teenager listening to Jimmy Page and Keith Richards and I loved what they were playing, I loved the sound. Back then I had no idea that what I was listening to was blues — I don’t think I even knew what blues was. And a friend of mine gave me B.B. King Live At The Regal — an LP, vinyl — we put it on the turntable and started playing. I looked at my friend and I said, “This guy sounds like Jimmy Page,” and he started laughing and he said, “No actually, it’s the other way around brother!” (laughs). So that’s when I first realized that my heroes had influences too and there influences were a lot of blues players and American roots music. So I started thinking about blues back at a pretty early age, as a teenager. B.B. King was the first — I love his voice and the simplicity of his playing. I also got into Muddy Waters, Elmore James for slide stuff as well as Johnny Winter. I dug as far back as Son House and Robert Johnson. To this day, I still, when I put those records on, and listen to ‘em, you can feel the human spirit and soul in that music and I’m very glad that my friend gave me that record because it allowed me to go back and see where my heroes got it from. That also allows you to feel that inspiration from the authentic original thing, and be inspired by it and possibly interpret it a little bit in your own way. I love the blues.
Do you still have a turntable?
I don’t but I’m about to get one because The Way Life Goes is coming out on vinyl. I told Savannah just a couple weeks ago, “We gotta get a turntable, I wanna hear the new record coming out!”
Let’s talk about music today. In the 1980s, stadium touring was the norm. Now it’s smaller tours, Lollapalooza, festivals, etc. What do you think about the decline of stadium touring and to what do you attribute the decline?
Well, there are obviously still artists who play on a very large scale, and new artists too. It’s still happening. I think it’s not happening as frequently as it did a million years ago. I don’t know why that is…I think that there are a lot of reasons. I think that across the board the entire industry has changed and while there’s still that window that you can crack through and sell a lot of records and possibly become a huge touring act, there’re obviously examples of new artists who’ve done that and who are capable of doing that, but I think that window of opportunity is smaller. I think the reason for that comes down to one thing: the lack of protection for intellectual property that has increasingly become a problem over the last 15-20 years — the very instant the first audio file went across the Internet, I think we were looking at a new world.
On your Facebook page, you have a long post regarding Spotify. Why are Spotify and similar business models bad for artists and the industry, and how does that relate to your viewpoint on the state of the industry today?
It all comes down to one thing — intellectual property is the term they use, maybe the technical term for it, but creation of music, literature, movies — whatever it is — it’s a real thing and years ago, before the world we’re in now, there was X amount of revenue that was generated from that creation and not only did the revenue go to compensate the artist who created it, whether it was literature or movies or music, but a big chunk of that revenue that was generated went back through the system and the record company or the publishing company to develop talent and to sign talent and to stay behind them and work with them over several records and to me that’s the broader picture that worries me. A lot of people that I see online, they kind of get defensive and have this attitude that “Well, these artists and these rock stars they make plenty of money and who gives a shit if they get paid or not.” And they can have that attitude, and that’s fine, but that level of artist is not the majority of songwriters and artists, or musicians that are in the world today so there’s a big difference there. But the bigger problem is the collapse of the industry and the much diminished percentage of generated revenue allotted for talent development. Records cost money to make, and quality records require great engineers and great producers and great studios, and I just see less and less windows of opportunity for artists to be signed and to be developed and to have their talents nurtured and to me that’s scariest of all. I think that what a lot of people don’t realize is the damage that’s done to the art itself by decreasing or eliminating the development of new artists.
You’ve had severe medical issues that could easily have sidelined your career. On listening to the new album, I don’t hear it. Your voice is amazing and sounds better than ever! What did you do to get the voice back in shape?
I was diagnosed with a partially paralyzed vocal chord in the early 90s and I was told I’d never sing again because there’s no medical cure. I can’t take a pill or have a surgery. The only hope I had is that I was told by one physician I might be able to retrain my vocal cord- I mean teach that one vocal cord to do the right thing. It’s not an exact science, and over the years I’ve worked with countless speech pathologists that start at the speech level and I’d learn where to place the vowels and consonants, then start working with vocal coaches learning how to hold notes again on different vowel. I’ve had to bounce around from different speech therapists and vocal coaches and pick up knowledge about technique about how to literally trick the vocal chords into doing what they used to do.
Over the years, there’ve been ups and downs and there’ve have been years when I haven’t been able to sing at all. I’ve had six surgeries to repair the collateral damage because while singing with that weakness, I’ve hemorrhaged my vocal chords and bruised them and torn them up and required surgery to repair. So it’s been a long road but the good news is, in recent years, the culmination of all the teachers I’ve worked with and the knowledge that I’ve obtained, I’ve found a way to keep it in shape and get it to do what I need it to do and it’s been really strong in recent years. Especially the last three, four years and I thank God for that every day that I can still do what I love to do and as long as I maintain it with about an hour-and-a-half, two hours every day of therapy and exercises, I think I’ve got it figured out — but it’s taken years.
On show days, do you still do the hour-and-a-half to two-hour therapy exercise?
Yeah. My therapy is rain or shine year round. Show days, warm-ups or therapy or whatever you want to call it are as long if not longer than the show itself.
The new album is called The Way Life Goes. Tell us about your process and how it came about?
The record was produced independently of a label, I had a ton of songs that I’d written since the mid-90s and by the time I started production in 2003, I’d been offered a lot of different deals. But they were nominal in the artist development and recording fund areas. You know, I feel for new artists for that very reason. I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here. Okay, back to the album — I recorded it independently of a label so I’d have the freedom to work on it and not have any release dates or deadlines that I’d have to adhere to. So the independent decision was made partly because of the offers I’d received and I just didn’t want the music being compromised in any way by getting to the end of a recording budget and a label saying, “OK, well, you’re done.” So I produced it independently and then shopped it to a label for the marketing aspect. The record took 10 years to make. Wasn’t planning on it being that way, but that’s just what happened. II guess that’s one of the negatives of not having a label breathing down your neck (laughs). It was a labor of love over the years and it was about creating just what I wanted to hear coming out of the studio speakers. Never dreamed it’d take 10 years to make it, but one day I woke up and pressed play and felt like we’d gotten there and it was a fun record to make. I produced it with my wife Savannah, who’s a wonderful songwriter, and a really good friend here in Nashville, Chuck Turner, who’s a great engineer and producer. The three of us get along really well and we really enjoyed the process of making it — I got no complaints — I’m happy with the end result and I’m glad we did it the way we did. We did shop it to a label — a fantastic label Merovee Records that really believes in the record and they’ve really gotten behind it and done a great job of getting it out there.
What’s on the horizon for Tom Kiefer?
I’ve been touring for The Way Life Goes since February and there’ll be more in the fall. For Cinderella, this year was a planned hiatus for us because we’d toured for the three years prior and had really burnt the candle at both ends. We’d toured the states three years in a row, Europe twice, South America…so at the end of 2012, we were ready for a break. That lined up well timing wise for the release of my solo record.
Any advice to today’s young musicians?
I think it starts with the music — and the music has to be uniquely you and it has to be your soul, so don’t chase trends. Make sure your music is you and what you love. Eventually the trend will become you if you stay true to yourself. Regarding the challenges in the industry we’ve spoken about — those kids — those people are whom I’m most concerned about. The up and coming artists, I wanna see them get the same shot that a lot of us have gotten over the years. Don’t get discouraged. Every new decade and every new generation and every up and coming artist has their own challenges, it’s just different challenges. It’s always the impossible dream, it always has been. Arm yourself with knowledge and information and figure out how to get around the challenges and live your dream..
