After an absence of 19 years, rock guitarist/songwriter vocalist Kane Roberts has returned with his sixth solo album, and first one of all new material since 2000, with the release of The New Normal on Jan. 25 through Frontiers Music.
His previous record was a release of archived material in 2012 called Unsung Radio, meaning his last official solo album of new material was New Place Now, which came out at the dawn of the new millennium.
More than just a musician and songwriter of some acclaim and noteworthiness, Roberts’ creativity led him into the world of video production, video game design for many years, while intermittently returning to the music industry to varying degrees of involvement. Refreshingly, Roberts never felt the compulsion to focus the entirety his existence on being in the public eye as a ‘rock star’ preferring to develop his behind-the-scenes artistry in music and other avenues.
“I don’t feel I am necessarily supposed to be doing any one activity, so to speak. When I left the music industry [which he has done a couple of times, most recently in the early 2000s] it was mostly because of the business itself. Once you’re in it for a while and you’re looking at these structures and just how the models of the business are, you realize you can’t really expect a lot. And also, you can become obsessed with being the best guitar player, the best drummer, the best bass player in the world, and in some cases that’s okay as long as you don’t lose sight of your long-term ambitions,” he said.
“You’ve got to remember where the humble genesis of being a working musician began; we started by playing a mandolin on the side of the road with bells on the toes of our shoes and rich people would go by and throw coins at us. In many ways, it really has changed that much since then. So, you have to think to yourself, what is the good part of the music industry and what is the part you have to bite the bullet on to get involved with it. I decided that sometimes it was better to take a break and focus on the good part – the playing, the writing – and leave the other part behind. But now that I am back, I am very passionate about what I am doing, especial with this new record.”
Roberts said he never really expected to get back into the business in the way he has since signing with Frontiers again three years ago, in anticipation of putting together a new album. Unlike many within the industry, he believes the music business is on the upswing, especially for rock acts and artists.
“The truth is, I think the music industry is better off than ever for young artists, because they have so many outlets and so much freedom. And hopefully they find a record company like Frontiers which is entirely committed to the music itself. When I got into doing this new record, I was really tired of the music industry, so I just kind of walked away from it. That’s kind of my nature. I still played music, I still played live at times and met fans and stuff like that. But it was all kind of being done quietly and for my own pleasure,” he said.
“Kip Winger [who played alongside Roberts with Alice Cooper before building his own successful band] suggested I try reaching out to Frontiers because he noticed I was playing a tremendous amount and doing a lot of writing. So, he hooked me up and they gave me a record deal. But it was a great experience compared my past experiences because suddenly I had this record company that wasn’t pushing me around, and I didn’t have a management company guiding my every step. I had the freedom to do it at my own pace and take some chances.”
The result is an album the accentuates just how accomplished, experienced and schooled Roberts is as a composer of hard-hitting, memorably melodic heavy rock music. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise as he helped co-wrote and collaborated with the likes of Rod Stewart, Desmond Child, Kiss, Alice in Chains, Gun ‘n Roses and more throughout his varied career.
The New Normal, from it’s strikingly evocative album cover, through each of the 10 songs, is rife with commentary on the faults, and foibles of society as a collective, and the trials and tribulations of we as individual human beings. But it’s also a rallying cry that these obstacles can be overcome; that we don’t have to settle for other people’s expectations, ways of thinking or modes of living. All of which falls in line with the sense of progressive, independent thinking Roberts elucidated upon earlier in this article.
“When you look at the girl on the cover, you have these notions about her. She’s all jacked up and has blood on her bands and a number of people have said to me, ‘does that mean women are victims?’ And I said, ‘no man, it’s not her blood.’ You can’t take things on face value any more. There are a lot of different aspects of our lives that we think are etched in stone but are now not just crumbling, but they’re being blown apart,” he said, adding that’s why he was excited to have current Alice Cooper guitarist Nita Strauss participate on the album, contributing a badass solo on the song King of the World, as well as having Alissa White-Gluz of Arch Enemy sing on a track.
“Nita is one of those women who is doing that. To see her on stage, and even just hear her solo on this album, you know she is one of the top guitarists. It’s no longer just a male enterprise. And you look at Alissa and how she walks out in the midst of Arch Enemy an there’s 80,00 people out there and she just f***ing owns it as well as anybody has.”
“That’s the new normal. The new normal is you end up with more. In other words, the old notions aren’t obliterated and don’t disappear as if they never happened. But you move forward with those things still in hand and you end up with a lot more in terms of what you expect out of life and who we are as people.”
Roberts first came to international prominence as the guitar player/co-writer in Alice Cooper’s band, during his mid-1980s resurgence. He collaborated in the studio and was part of his backing band for the Constrictor (1986) and Raise Your Fist and Yell (1987) albums, and also co-wrote a lot of the material for the 1989 album Trash, although by this time he had become a solo artist, releasing his self-titled debut in 1987. But the connection with Cooper remains, as evidenced by the unmistakable vocal performance the legendary singer gives on the song Beginning of the End, which also features Arch Enemy’s Alissa White-Gluz.
“When I first met him, his manager Shep [Gordon] and producer Bob Ezrin were all there. And they liked the fact that I wasn’t the average kind of rocker, with the look and the clothes and everything. I was buff and a little demented and was pretty hyper. I looked ‘off Broadway’ to them. And I think they were attracted to that initially but then liked my writing as well – Ezrin was the first to notice that. And in truth within 10 minutes of sitting down with Alice in this big office in New York City, with all these business guys around, Alice and I became best friends. And there was a level of trust that we developed that first day and that first day we also started to write together,” he said.
“The greatest success I got out of that situation in my life was meeting Alice, and we’re still friends, and he knows he can trust me to do anything. And I am really blessed that he came out and sang on the record, and then he took a day off from golf and shot a video with me and Alissa up in Vancouver. So, I was really grateful and really lucky.”
The different ‘look’ that Roberts was talking about was the fact that he was the antithesis in many ways of the stereotypical 1980s rock guitar player, which was dominated by slightly built players like Warren DeMartini of Ratt, Mick Mars of Motley Crue, Dokken’s George Lynch, etc. etc., Roberts was a hulking ripped bodybuilder. Add to that the fact that he had long curly dark hair, wore a headband and had a guitar shaped like a machine gun and he soon earned the unofficial nickname of Rambo.
Unfortunately, the marketing and press of the day ONLY focussed on what they saw as his freakish and unusual appearance, and not the fact that he was an exceptional musician, whose songwriting chops helped sell a lot of records for Cooper during those years.
“The funniest thing was I remember reading a Creem magazine at the time. I was on the tour bus and the article was talking about some of the most underrated guitarists and they said one was Kane ‘Rambo’ Roberts. And I thought ‘Rambo Roberts?’ Where they hell are they getting that? And then I looked at myself in the mirror at the hotel and with the headband and everything I was totally looking like Sylvester Stallone. But trust me, I didn’t realize that – I was that clueless. Here I have a gun guitar, I have the curly hair and the muscles, but it was really funny that I didn’t really see that,” he said.
“People focused on that particular aspect of who I was because of my look, but I was okay with that, really, because my look was one of the reasons why they hired me, they knew I wasn’t thinking like anybody else. And they liked that.”
Returning to the subject of the album’s latest single, Beginning of the End has an ultimately positive and empowering message, but couched in the story of how sometimes the heroes of life are just ordinary people put into extraordinary situations – folks who have to battle both their inner demons, and the evils of the outside world as well.
“I am asking what does it take for us to stand up and realize our full potential? What does it take to be a hero? And it mirrors the hero’s journey in most movies. People have their ordinary lives, like Luke Skywalker, who is just working on the farm with his aunt and uncle, but then Obi Wan Kenobi comes along and tell him that he’s got to save the galaxy. But he doesn’t want to, he wants to return to his life but comes back to the farm and sees that it’s been destroyed and everybody’s dead. So, there’s the crisis that pushes him into becoming a hero,” Roberts explained.
“And that’s kind of what the song is saying. It’s about how there are these power structures that just beat us down and keep our minds in line and try to control every aspect of our lives. And that can be the government or the people that are around us who are trying to dominate. So, the point of the song is that things have come to pass, and things are about to take place and the shit has hit the fan. So, it’s the beginning of the end of that way of living.
“We’re saying goodbye to the world we’ve known and that you’re finally standing for something. It means you’ve got to get up and stand up for yourself or just get eaten up by life. And I think we all face those kinds of realities – and on a daily basis if you really think of it. If you just sit down and give up and stop doing stuff, you’re in big trouble.”
The song Who We Are is itself a modern take on the age-old question of what happens after the fiery passion of a brief encounter wanes, leaving behind the stark reality of how the relationship will progress – if it does at all.
“It’s got a feel like those 1980s power ballads, but I wanted a more modern, more realistic message. Back in the days a lot of the music was saying she’s a beautiful woman, but she’s evil and she’s done me wrong and now I hate you. I got tired of that messaging system pretty quick. So, this is a more modern way of looking at things. It’s two people who have had this incredible week of passion and sex and now where do they go from there? Are they in love or was it just getting lost in the moment? Do they pursue this thing, is it about a real relationship, or was it just the timing of the moment in both their lives? Is it about love, is it about sex? What is it about?” Roberts said.
“The lyrics go back and forth with the girl saying she might want to walk away and not see him again, but that living with him feels like suicide. Relationships are complex and I think in this day and age, everybody’s being a little more upfront and honest. If you can’t be honest about your feelings and expectations, your relationships don’t have a shot. I think that’s what this couple us doing, they’re trying to have an honest discussion as to where they are. As I said before, thy had incredible sex or whatever it was, and now they’re trying to deal with whether to continue and whether it’s actually real.”
For more information on Roberts, The New Normal, and other news and touring information, visit https://www.facebook.com/pg/KaneRobertsFBPage.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
SHARE THIS POST:
