Q&A: Slash sets sights on blues with new festival

Iconic guitarist to perform at Artpark

By Thom Jennings

Special to Niagara Frontier Publications

Grammy Award-winning Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitar legend Slash brings his inaugural traveling blues festival to Artpark on Tuesday, July 30. The tour is in support of “Orgy of the Damned,” an album that features the iconic guitarist performing a selection of blues songs along with an impressive list of guest vocalists.

Dubbed the S.E.R.P.E.N.T Festival, the trek features a rotating lineup of openers. The Artpark date features Keb’ Mo, ZZ Ward, and Robert Randolph. “Orgy of the Damned” has already hit No. 1 on the blues album charts, and the tour kicked off earlier this month.

During a recent interview, Slash discussed the tour, the album, and how the blues influenced him musically.

Thom: I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today. You're a week into the tour, so tell me the pinch-me moments and the elevator pitch for people to come see it.

Slash: Well, the tour has been great. Going into it, I had no real idea exactly what to expect. I've never done a blues festival before, but I just knew it would be cool to do an outdoor summer festival. Having gotten into it, it has such a great vibe. I love playing with the other artists, and the crowd's vibe is excellent. It's turning out to be an awesome venture.

For people planning to attend, it's hard to describe it. It's just a day of really great music. There are a lot of diverse explorations in the blues genre, ours being probably the hardest-hitting one because I am me, and it is just a matter of what I play; it's going to be loud and in your face. But it's just a great time. That's about as big as an explanation I can give you.

Thom: I'm sure it's not lost on you that, when we think of the blues in America, you have the American version, but then Clapton and Led Zeppelin and all those guys took to it in England and brought it back to us. You grew up in Los Angeles, but you're really from England. So, you have the best of both worlds there.

Slash: I know; it's funny because I was raised listening to British rock ’n’ roll. I mean, that's all I was exposed to for the first seven years of my life. Then, when I moved to the States, I was still very much into everything that was British. My mom was the one who turned me on to BB King to show me where the Brits all got it from. That opened up a whole world of music for me.

Thom: That leads nicely to my next question because I wonder what the listening experience was like when formulating both the album and the setlist. You're a busy guy, but curating a set of these blues songs must have required you to go on a listening exploration to decide what songs you ultimately chose for the record.

Slash: It was different from what you call a one-sit-down listening exploration. It was more like my lifetime exploration, because I picked songs that significantly impacted me and influenced me growing up. So, all these songs we picked had a particular and direct influence on me as a musician or were just songs I loved as a little kid. I could have made a more extensive or longer record, but this handful of songs have a particular backstory for me, so it was easy to pick them.

Slash (Image by Gene Kirkland // courtesy of Prime PR Group)

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Thom: One of those songs is "The Pusher" by Steppenwolf, a Canadian band, and you're playing here in Lewiston, New York, which is right on the Canadian border. You will be on the same stage where John Kay and Steppenwolf performed the song in 2017. They're one of those bands not appreciated as much as they should be for their influence on rock and blues. That song was a very interesting choice and you're playing it in the set as well, right?

Slash: When I was a little kid, I loved Steppenwolf, and for a band from the ’60s, they were like the hard-edge, not so much a peace and love band. They weren't quite like MC5, but they were hard rock and hard-edged. I just always dug that attitude.

I mean, "Easy Rider" was a huge influence on the people that my parents hung out with when I was little, and Steppenwolf was part of that movie, and I have always loved them, but that particular song is special. There are a lot of great Steppenwolf songs. “Born to be Wild" is great; "Magic Carpet Ride" is great, and all that; but "The Pusher always got to me. That was the song that I picked because of its influence on me, and it's pretty much like that across the board, and all the songs aren't specifically blues. There are rock ’n’ roll songs, and there are also some R&B songs. So, it was songs that I grew up with.

Slash (Image courtesy of Prime PR Group)

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Thom: This music is clearly very important to you. We were both in our formative years when that first Blues Brothers album came out. They saw spreading blues music as a mission. Do you remember that album coming out, and do you have the same sense that this project is a kind of mission to promote blues music?

Slash: Those two comedians were exposing the world to their musical roots and then they had that great backing band with Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, and all those other guys! Oh, yeah, that was a killer record.

For me, this wasn't so focused on being a mission. It was just something that I've been itching to do. And then finally got around to doing it.

I've been working with a couple of these guys in a band since the ’90s, and it was just a cover band. It was cool, and I'd wanted to record it back then. But it wasn't something I took so seriously as to make it a priority, and it never got done. But then you're all these years later, playing the blues is an excellent outlet for me.

And when you were in a band like Guns N' Roses or even Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators or Velvet Revolver, they're very organized with many different influences, a whole melting pot with other people having input. So, you can't just go on a blues exploration with those bands, not even for a song.

But this kind of thing, you can, and it's just fun for me, and I enjoy doing it. So, when I made this record, it was something that I wanted to do for the fun of it, and it was enjoyable. I didn't have the mission aspect of it. It was just something I needed to get off my chest.

Slash brings the Solidarity, Engagement, Restore, Peace, Equality N’ Tolerance (aka S.E.R.P.E.N.T.) Festival to Artpark in Lewiston on Tuesday, July 30. For tickets or more information, visit www.artpark.net.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist Slash will headline a July 30 concert at Artpark. (Images courtesy of Prime PR Group)