If you’ve ever watched a performance by Rival Sons, your first impression of singer Jay Buchanan is that he is serious, mysterious, almost shamanistic in the way he seems to put every drop of emotion into the conveyance of the song he is singing. His body will twist in turmoil, sweat pouring off of him, as he reaches out to the audience. It’s no wonder the band has been on the cover of Classic Rock not once but twice since they formed in the late 2000’s. The Brits saw it before we did and hailed them as the future of rock & roll. Four studio albums later, Rival Sons are living up to the hype while not allowing the attention to overwhelm their private lives or the complexity of their music.
With a frontman like Buchanan, Rival Sons could have easily spun out of control. Instead they have prospered. “He definitely has an understanding for soul music and the blues,” guitarist Scott Holiday said about his bandmate in a 2012 interview with me for Glide. “I really knew that he was the right click for the group and whether we achieved some larger fame or whatever at least I know I can make good records with him.” Good records indeed. Their last offering, Great Western Valkyrie, is a hypnotic dance of psychedelic swirls, blues mojo and crunching guitars, and has been recently released in what they are calling a special tour edition, with three live songs, a cover of Humble Pie’s “Black Coffee” and two bonus songs from the Valkyrie sessions.
With a major tour opening for Black Sabbath beginning on January 20th in Omaha, Rival Sons are gearing up for maybe the tour of their life. And they are quite excited about it, even though they’ve opened up for some pretty big names in the past (AC/DC, Guns N Roses and Alice Cooper among them). For Buchanan, who comes across in interviews as keenly cognitive, when he called in for an interview last week, he was actually joyful, laughing, humbled by their current predicament and excited for the road ahead; a perfect exemplification for never judging a book by it’s cover.
Born into a music-loving family, Buchanan began singing early in childhood, started writing songs and playing instruments. He was involved in doing his own thing by the time Rival Sons came calling. When Holiday first heard Buchanan’s singing via a link online, “Literally about thirteen seconds into the first song that I was listening to, I had like chills, goosebumps,” he told me in 2012. “We struck it off really good right out of the gate and when we got together it was even better.” But being in a rock band was not necessarily Buchanan’s plan at the time. “I just thought rock and roll for the most part, was a lot of posture and it’s a bunch of dickheads just trying to out-cool each other,” Buchanan explained to Glide’s Marc Lacatell during an in-depth 2014 interview. “I just thought that was just the dumbest thing that you could ever do. And so, I had no desire to ever do that.” Funny how things turn around and now Buchanan is one of rock & roll’s new leading vocalists.
Glide spoke with Buchanan last week, this time focusing on the upcoming tour with Sabbath and his life as a songwriter.
You’re getting ready to go on tour with one of the most iconic bands in rock. That must be exciting for you guys to be chosen for that opening slot.
Oh of course it is. You know, we tour all the time, so touring, we’re used to it and we’ve opened for so many bands and we’ve had the pleasure to get to know these bands and watch them night after night and watch them do their thing. But for Sabbath, we’re particularly excited. It’s such a big deal that I kind of don’t think about it (laughs), cause that’s pretty mind-blowing and I start thinking of that and going, nope, I’ve got to put that one in the vault; I’m going to deal with that when we get on tour (laughs).
You don’t strike me as someone who gets starstruck easily
I think that there’s only a few times in my life I’ve ever felt that way, but not so much when you’re an adult because as you grow up in this art you realize that everybody is doing their version of the same thing. You know, everybody is making their music, everyone is singing their song and you give people the benefit of the doubt and you think that everyone is giving their version of the truth. So then at that point, everyone becomes very human. That being said, I’m really looking forward to watching them play and meeting these guys.
You’ve opened for a lot of different bands. What do you think you’ve learned the most from watching them?
Oh gosh, I think the collective big lesson would have to be that it doesn’t end until you decide that it ends. So watching some of these guys that are pretty old and pretty out of shape but they are still up there swinging that hammer and loving it. Just watching people like this is the fountain of youth. I think we’ve always known that and musicians age in a different way. Like some have really hard lives but they still age really well and they keep a youthfulness about them and looking at that and looking way down the road to when I’ll be there someday, I’m thinking, yeah, that’s the way out, you know; that’s the way I want to turn seventy years old. I want it to be where I’m playing, that I have a gig that night, and that makes me happy, because it’s all part of that same fabric from the time I was a kid listening to music and being so enamored with music to my first gig to everything, looking at that and going, that’s actually part of the story, and it becomes a really romantic thing for me.
It’s like the old blues players – they’re on stage until they keel over
Yeah and it’s not just the old blues guys. People ask me, “So how long do you see yourself touring?” cause touring is not a particularly fun thing. It’s pretty demanding and you miss your family and you’re always on the go. But look at what you get to do. You have the world’s best job, it’s just you have to go away for work, you have to travel for this. So all of the traveling and all of the inconvenience and living that transient lifestyle, on one hand you look at it and you think, this is pretty rough, I’d really just like to get home – you want to get home to see your family and to be a family man, to see your kids and your wife and pet your dogs and just be on vacation for a little bit. So you have that heartache. But on the other side you look at it and go, well, I actually get to do this and look at ten thousand people out in the audience and you go, this is what I do every night, things aren’t so tough, this is definitely doable. I can handle this.
You’re doing what you love and not everybody gets to do that
Exactly and you know all things being relative, everyone gets lost every now and then, everyone is going to get worn out and you have to reshape your perspective to remember how fortunate you are to be able to do this because you are incredibly fortunate if you get to do this for a living.
Do you remember your first encounter with Sabbath’s music?
Yeah, I was just being a teenager getting stoned, hanging out with friends. That’s it, out in the desert at night. Hearing Sabbath coming through, out of somebody’s car and the joints being passed around and everybody is just kicking back and feeling cool (laughs).
It doesn’t leave you easily when you hear Sabbath for the first time
Yeah, exactly, because it’s so heavy, heavy in a different way altogether, and it’s a completely different sort of heavy. I had grown up mostly on the blues and a little bit of rock & roll, got a little bit of Zeppelin. So there’s that but when I heard that I went, wow, that’s not metal, because I had heard metal and that wasn’t really my thing so much, you know, growing up. But then I remember hearing Black Sabbath and going, well, that’s not metal. I think that’s heavier than metal is (laughs). That’s a whole different bag of tricks. But yeah, it stays with you. It’s like somebody threw blood on your shirt (laughs). It’s really hard to get out.
Will you be changing your setlist up any on this particular run?
Right now, Leslie, we’re putting that together. I’m sure that we’ll change things up with our set. With an opening set as the opening band, especially for a band of this caliber, these people have been waiting for months for this one day to come. So they’re putting X’s on their calendar every day when they get up and go to work. “Okay, it’s twenty more days until Sabbath.” Next day, got their coffee, their travel mug. “Alright, nineteen more days until Sabbath.” Next day they wake up, “I hate my boss but I only got eighteen more days till Sabbath. Yeah!” (laughs) “It’s not so bad, I can do this! Five more days till Sabbath! I want to get drunk so bad but I got to go to work.”
So finally that day comes and they are driving and they’ve got their friends and they’re going to see Sabbath, probably the last time we’re going to see Sabbath. So they park, they’re real excited and then they walk into the arena and they’re excited again, get a way too expensive beer and then they get to their seat and the energy coming off these people is crazy (laughs). So then somebody gets on stage that is not Sabbath and you’re kind of that thing that comes in between the rest of their life and that thing they’ve been waiting so hard for (laughs). So we’re looking at that and we have this opportunity to play for all these people. We’ve recorded six records and because we’re the opening band we really just have to do a greatest hits, the best songs from each record, and of course we’re going to be changing it up and just seeing what works. “What do we feel like playing tonight?” We’re going to be on Sabbath for a long time so we’re going to have more than enough opportunities to see what works best.
Will you guys have time for creating some new music?
Yeah, we will be releasing a record this year. Actually, we are just finishing it. So that one is done but it’s going to take months for vinyl to be pressed and all but we just released our tour edition of our Great Western Valkyrie record so after that has run it’s course we’ll launch another record, probably late spring or early summer.
So what was going through your mind writing the new record?
Typically the same thing that usually goes through my mind. Every time you do another record it’s a new experience for you. Even if you’d made a shit ton of records and written a shit ton of songs, who you are at the time you’re writing is always going to be a little bit different. I think it’s a damn good collection of songs.
When did you start really paying attention to the lyrics and the meanings of the songs you were hearing when you were younger?
The lyrics were right away. Even when I was a little kid I would listen and the lyrics got me. And I’m talking about hearing Joni Mitchell or hearing Fleetwood Mac on the turntable when I was three years old, four years old, listening to records with my older sister. The lyrics always got me. What’s being said and how when they sing these words they sound different than when you talk because when somebody sings them they sound so much better (laughs). Like, every word sounds so much better when it’s in a song. I remember thinking that and wondering and I remember asking my mom, “Why don’t people sing all the time? Instead of talking, why don’t they sing them cause it’s so much nicer.” “But not everybody knows how to sing.” And I just thought that was crazy. But the lyrics were always paramount to me. Lyrics were always at the heart of every song. So for the most part, if a song has bad lyrics, it better be one hell of a good musical song or else it doesn’t and wouldn’t stand up for me. But there are different functions. There are songs that make you feel a certain way just because of the music and the environment. Then there are lyrical songs and lyrical songs are the vast majority of my listening.
When you first started writing songs, were you able to be your own person or were you trying to mimic your influences?
You definitely lie to yourself telling yourself that you are your own person early on, just because you can’t bear the thought that you’re going to be emulating your idols. When I started out writing songs I was trying to be my own voice and that’s the way I saw it but I look back and I go, okay, I was definitely doing my best to copy Bob Dylan, copy Joni Mitchell. When I was a really little kid I remember Tracy Chapman’s first record. So then I copy like the singer-songwriter style and listening to their narratives.
When I think about – and I haven’t listened to them in a long time – but when I think about the songs I was writing at thirteen, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, as a young teenager really just trying to get as good as I can at songwriting and spent all of my time doing that. I look back and I think of the subject matter and I think of the narratives that I was writing and going, yeah, I was fishing pretty far for some of the stories or narratives. But you want to build things that are fantastic, you want to build things that are larger than life, so you have to look outside yourself, especially when you lack the heartaches and the experiences that all of these people that you grew up listening to. Now it’s time for you to write a song and well, what have I experienced at fourteen years old? A few things but then begins the imagination and the imagination fills in those holes and you just start storytelling. I think now it’s much more closer to home. You know when I’m writing, I’m writing about things that, unless it’s one of those songs that we put together that’s just supposed to be something you can shake your ass to, otherwise, if it’s any sort of legitimate subject matter, I’m going to pay pretty close attention to it.
You talk about your mother and her singing quite often. What was it about your mother’s voice that you loved so much? Was it the sound of her voice or what she was singing?
First of all, it’s my mother’s voice and I think for anybody, if they’ve ever heard their mother sing, it just sounds like home and it sounds like love and it sounds like comfort. When I think about her voice, it sounds vulnerable, she is vulnerable. Being a kid and listening to her, and I’ve said it before, it just sounded like the truth, it sounded true, cause my mother is one of those straight-forward people that will tell you exactly what’s on her mind. So when she would sing it sounded like her heart. I grew up that way. I’ve heard a few voices that sound like that but with my mother I think that was definitely the gold standard to me. So growing up and hearing these other people, they wouldn’t have that authenticity or they were trying too hard or they were trying to sell you something; like they were trying to sell an image or a story to you instead of just being themselves and that’s what my mother sounded like. She just sounded like herself with no defenses, with no motive, no anything.
I would listen to her singing in church and that would be great and she would sing these hymns and solos and for her, she’s doing her best to sing to God with all of her heart and that’s a really moving thing because at the same time she was like giving it up completely. Hearing that, it just sounded all the more real because she is singing to the people but more than anything she is singing to God and that was mind-blowing as a kid to witness that. That really was the mark of authenticity for me; just a realness to me.
When you first started singing, were you singing with her?
No, I was just singing. My parents said I started singing really early and I remember when I would play with my toys I would sing. I would be a real little kid walking out in the backyard playing with the dogs or whatever and singing. My family was very musical and we would all sing together – and I’m talking about when I was real young – and in my family everybody plays music, everybody is musical, so we would have jam sessions and sing songs, harmonize, all of that stuff all of the time. Music was just a central thing in our house. So there was no beginning of singing that I recall. There wasn’t like a start to it. I remember singing in school and then getting chosen for like the choir. I would sing in grade school. I sang in middle school and then I ended up singing in high school in the choirs just because music was so fun.
There is a song on your last record called “Open Your Eyes,” which has so many dimensions to it. How did that song come about?
Scott had the riff and then the band put together a jam, because that’s how some of our songs come about, where the band will jam and then they’ll put these parts together and then we’ll all get together and then I’ll start arranging for it to turn into a song. I’ll walk in and they’ll be working on something and they’ll be like, “Hey, check it out, what do you think, Jay? This is the verse and this is the chorus.” And we’ll start building on things. We work very, very quickly. And I really liked that riff a lot and I liked that feel that was going on. So I sat on that for a day and then the other guys had a day off and I remember I had a really bad hangover the next day and it was just me and the producer and the engineer and I was going to work on some arrangements and lay down a couple of vocals. So I got in there and Dave Cobb was saying, “Alright Jay, you need to work on this song now. You’ve got to turn this one and get this one together and write for this song.” And the chorus that we had, I was thinking, we really need to do something different here and I remember having the hardest time. All I want to do is go home. I don’t feel well. But then I’m thinking, we have to work, we’re making this record, there’s no option, we got to see it through.
So I was really feeling low, physically, cause when you have a hangover it’s just the worst thing in the world, and I’m sitting there in the studio and I’m writing, because for a song you’re going to approach it from a couple of different ways. You want to serve the song and let the song become what it’s asking to become. So I put these lyrics together and I ended up taking some different parts they had and kind of rebuilding and developing musically a new chorus and I felt like that chorus sounded good, which is the chorus that you know now. But I remember leaving the studio that day after laying down the vocal, doing all of this and rearranging the song and thinking, Oh Jesus Christ, I hope the band likes this cause if they don’t like this, oh man. You know, just thinking, I took what they did and completely rearranged it and I really hope they like it cause if they don’t like it, I’m going to get so upset (laughs). Cause you never know.
For the most part we work as a committee and a lot of ideas, a lot of songs, die because we, the band, don’t agree on some things. Everybody has to be into it before we invest it. So it’s always sad to watch some good songs just die right there on the floor, like, oh no, I love that song. But it happens. Anyways, our producer, Dave Cobb, loved it and the band right away was like, yeah! So I was very happy about it. Lyrically, it’s really that feeling of being at an impasse, you know, with your life or situation and just needing a hand. You know, somebody come and open my eyes. And for the most part, that’s really all it is. That coupled with some abstract imagery during the vocals, during the verses. I did that sort of a cut-up method of grabbing words that sounded good together to build an image, a good image for the verses.
Have you ever written a song that was so personal and raw that you had to rewrite it or tuck it away?
Yeah, I’ve written songs that were so personal that other people tell me to put them away (laughs).
It doesn’t bother you to sing about something so personal?
No, I don’t think it’s difficult. I don’t think keeping your feelings or your experiences, your true thoughts or your true feelings, keeping those tucked away as some sort of clandestine property, I don’t see that as being healthy. And I know it’s really popular for people to do but I complain and I cry for a living every night onstage. So I look at it and I think, yeah, I say the things I feel like saying and I’m okay to talk about most experiences and my feelings on things so even if things do get super duper personal and you feel that pain, cause you know writing a song, like off that Head Down record, writing a song called “Jordan.” That was rough and writing that alone in my bedroom in Nashville while we were out there for that record, it was a painful process. But for some reason I felt that song needed to do that. So then I showed the band and Dave Cobb and everyone loved it right away. So great, now you’ve got to sing about this really painful thing every night. But a funny thing happens: even though it feels painful there is a real beauty and a real joy to it that is much stronger than any sadness is. The reality and the beauty of it all ends up winning over every time. So the situation or the experience that you’re writing about may be hard or may be very personal, experience at some point ends up becoming a static thing and then the truth and the lesson and the beauty of the experience ends up becoming the transcendent side of it and that’s the lasting side of it. So yeah, I just think of it as therapy.
Live photographs by Marc Lacatell
Prior Glide interviews with Rival Sons:
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