John Corabi says The Dead Daisies recorded a blues album when they recorded “Light ‘Em Up”

Friday September 6th, 2024, The Dead Daisies will release their new album “Light ‘Em Up.” I caught up with singer John Corabi via Zoom to discuss the album. As I did the intro, I commented about how many projects he’s been in. John replied, “I’ve played in every band but Abba.” After the initial joking we started to discuss the album. John was very happy with the response the band has been getting on the first two tracks. But he is anxious for people to hear the album in its entirety. A few months ago, John and I had talked about spoken when just the title track was available.

That made us pivot to discussing the new single “I’m Gonna Ride” and its video. I felt like shooting the video looked like a great time, but John said yes, and no. One day of shooting took place in Nashville on a day off after having had a show the night before. John spoke about it being 101 degrees and humid that day. If you ride a Harley, you know that the bikes are air cooled. Combine a hot day with the heat from the engine you’ll understand that John found himself asking for breaks in the shooting. John did confirm that the bike he rides in the video is indeed his own. John also owns a trike which he shared that his wife likes better than the Softail he rides in the video. John explained in detail that the tune is all about how relaxing riding can really be. John even reminisced about the bike he had during his time in Motley Crue. He spoke about he and Tommy Lee riding together but that he wasn’t really happy riding around in LA with the traffic and everything else that goes with that. We also talked about some great roads for riding across the country.

Then I reeled it in so we could get back to talking about music. This is when I mentioned the album’s closing track “Take My Soul.” I asked John about the song having so many elements of classic blues, from the distorted vocal, to the chains sound effect to the theme of the lyrics. That was when John confessed that while the band was recording “Light ‘Em Up” they also recorded a Blues album that will be released in 2025. And they did both albums in a total of 29 days. He explained how they took liberties with the Blues tunes they were recording. The Dead Daisies were working on the Robert Johnson song “Terraplane Blues.” They had changed the song so much that it no longer sounded like the song they had started with. It was then pulled from the Blues album only to end up on “Light ‘Em Up.” John then imagined the song like a movie about a man who gets drunk, gets into a fight over a woman, kills a man and ends up locked up.

Next up I mentioned how the majority of the album was upbeat, but one track stood out because it was more mellow, “Love That’ll Never Be.” John originally was working on that for a solo project. It was too pretty as it was for “Light ‘Em Up” but they “Daisiefied the original idea.” A lot of the album has a sing along type quality to it. John commented that when they hit the road back in June for a short while, the “Light ‘Em Up” video was already released, and he saw people in the audience already singing along to the song at the shows. He said, “I don’t even remember the lyrics and I wrote them.”

The guitars definitely stand out on this album but at the same time you hear that bass in there as well as the drums and vocals. That’s when I asked that even though members do change in The Dead Daisies if they have really gelled as a unit. John said, “I would hope so.”  John spoke about it being called a collective at the beginning. He said that had a lot to do with some of the members in the past and where they come from. John then shared that once he came back to The Dead Daisies the second time, he asked his team to not schedule anything when the Daisies have something going on. He also is giving anything he writes to The Daisies to consider first before he uses any of it for any solo project.

We did touch on touring. The band will be overseas until probably around the holidays. But right now, there are no immediate plans for any US dates.

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