~ Interview mit mit Gitarrist/Produzent Peter Friestedt ~
Vor Kurzem gaben sich CHAMPLIN WILLIAMS FRIESTEDT die Ehre: Sänger Joseph Williams (TOTO), Sänger Bill Champlin (ex-CHICAGO) und Gitarrist Peter Friestedt (THE LA PROJECT, WILLIAMS/FRIESTEDT). Das Trio veröffentlichte den Nachfolger seines erfolgreichen Debüts (Review siehe hier). Grund genug, um mit Peter Friestedt ein Schwätzchen zu halten. Hier im englischen Originalwortlaut nachzulesen:
Peter, nice to hear you again with Joseph Williams and Bill Champlin. Was the first record a success, so you absolutely had to produce a successor?
The very first thing we released was a Live-DVD called ´Live In Concert´ that made it all the way to the top of the charts in Scandinavia and that was a great start for CWF!
CWF II seems to be doing very well on the charts as well being # 6 in Sweden and # 17 in Japan so we are very excited, but to answer your question we feel that we have something special going on with this combo of Bill’s baritone and Joseph’s high pitch tenor plus these tailormade songs for them and that was the main reason for doing a second full length album.
When did the first idea for ´II´ came up … after all, 5 years have passed since your debut, and how long have you been working on it?
We started working on this album quite soon after we finished touring behind the first Album back in 2017.
We wanted other session musicians to add a specific flavours to certain songs. To success in creating an album with this amount of musicians takes alot of dedication and time. It took over three years to finalize the recordings. As a producer of the album I had a big responsiblity regarding this.
How did you record the album, each one of you in its own home studio?
We did all the vocal recordings in LA at Bill Champlin’s „Goldmine Studio“ and then I was collecting all the files and producing up the tracks in Sweden.
We have a really good chemistry when we are working together. We know each others strengths and have a lot of experience of working in the studio and touring together. This makes the process much easier.
Who is in command of such a project when Messrs Champlin and Williams have to agree with you?
I would say we all are, Joe and Bill are really good at producing each other when it comes to lead and background vocals. I may have a little more of a responisbility when it comes to finalizing the tracks and then we have a really good mixing engineer, Ronny Lahti who makes it all sound very good.
You have committed yourself again to wonderful choir and movement vocals and a warm West Coast sound. Where do you see the differences from the predecessor?
Thank you very much, Michael! I’m happy to hear that you like it. I think we keept the main ingredienses but aded a few flavours with these different guest vocalist’s and a few new twist’s like the soulful ´Love In The World´ and some heavier rockin’ tracks like ´Runaway Dancer´ and ´Price Of Love´.
I find it surprising that there are still many guest singers, but you have such great singers as Williams and Champlin. The duet Bill Champlin and Michael McDonald is of course outstanding. But why do people like Lars Säfsund or Frank Ådahl sing lead vocals? Didn’t Champlin / Williams have enough time to record? Tamara Champlin also sings a song alone ..
Joe was busy for a while cause he was the chief engineer of TOTO’s latest album ´Old Is New´ and had to be present on every recording session for that album and when it was finished TOTO went on their 40th anniversary tour for two years. We all agreed to finish up the album with different guest singers like Michael McDonald and Tamara Champlin.
´10 Miles´ and ´Amandas Disguise´ are already known from the EP, I know a ´Price Of Love´ from BATON ROUGE. Is the rest of the songs brand new?
´10 Miles´ and ´Amandas Disguise´ were released as a teaser /single/ep for the small scandinavia-tour we did back in 2018 just to give a taste of the new album and some people are annoyed that they are on the album, I just don’t get that. ´Look Away´ is an old CHICAGO-song that we did a new arrangement of while touring and it is really a favourite of mine.
After the debut, there was a live DVD as a reference. Are there any plans made this time?
We really hope to be able to go back on the road again when the world gets back to normal, but time will tell what will be possible in the near future. Thanks again for listening and hope everyone enjoys the album!
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