John Oates Finds The Good Road Home
Sometimes the best roads are the ones that lead us back home. After a 30 year odyssey that has taken him through the multi-colored world of pop super stardom, as one half of the popular duo, Hall & Oates, John Oates finds himself walking a road back to where he began, in the best sense. His road home returns him into the arms of the best in American musical traditions: Namely, the R&B of his hometown, Philadelphia & to the folk and blues he once absorbed there. During his childhood, Oates was a collector of rock & roll 45’s, that small,vinyl,circular one song-on-each side medium many baby-boomers grew up listening to. He was among them.
In an interview back in September while on a break from his busy tour schedule with Hall & Oates, John took a few minutes to give me an update on where his road has taken him over the last few years. After a few minutes on the phone with him there is a solid sense of someone who has found his center in music. He belongs to the song as much as the song belongs to him. It’s a communion that is as a holy as it is rowdy. Through music he’s a storyteller, a painter, an adventurer, a craftsman, a poet and an engaging historian of popular music.
According to Oates, Hall & Oates is mainly dedicated to touring in spring and summer with no plans for new recordings.”Hall & Oates have an incredible catalog of old recordings that have never been tapped into.” He said, “I hope that some hard-core fans will dig deep into the tracks and find some of these gems.”The duo was recently nominated and appears to have a lock on induction into the 2014 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
While Daryl Hall muses away on his VH1 television show Live From Daryl’s Place, John Oates has discovered the joy of being released from the burden of creating an album. About his latest work, Oates came clean with an admission that many artists have been realizing. “There’s a sense that the album is fading as a medium.” He explained. “There’s just not enough time for people to absorb an entire album. Today people can create their own albums through personal playlists and they go by individual songs.”
In response Oates has created a 12 month musical odyssey called Good Road To Follow on his website. For a marginal cost the fan receives twelve downloads as he releases a new single each month. The results have been inventive, imaginative and as fun to hear as the recordings must have been to create. There’s an easy, spontaneous live feel to the sessions that encourages the best in Oates and his mates.
Any of these songs can easily stand alongside Hall & Oates classics as skilled production and appealing R&B with an edgier bluesy feel to the proceedings. “I figured, why swim upstream?” He laughed. “The unexpected benefit was that I found I could make any kind of music I wanted. I didn’t have to worry about the continuity an album requires. I could just make separate songs and they could be as diverse as I wanted them to be. It didn’t matter since I was only focused on that one song on its own terms.” he said.
The guests along the way have been equally impressive. Recently, Oates completed collaborations with Jim Lauderdale and Vince Gill. “Close” with Lauderdale has a strong blues feel to it with clear ties to his early Philly-sound. There’s a sense of midnight fun to the track. Indeed, according to the two musicians, they did their best work together around the midnight hour. On the recent video posted on Good Road To Follow Oates explains how disappointed he was when he came away from a writing session with Lauderdale in a sterile Nashville studio with nothing to show. His wife then suggested calling Lauderdale at midnight. It was good advice. On their first midnight session they wrote three songs together. “Close” was among them. It is a unique blend of R&B, soul, rock and blues that creates what Oates himself describes as “Psychedelic Americana.” Oates still brings that Philly-soul feel to the proceedings. However, there’s also everything from a banjo to a sitar weaving through the funky groove of the song.
“Don’t Cross Me Wrong,” merges R&B with a muddy Mississippi Delta blues feel. There are horns combined with slide guitar and a fierce lead guitar solo by Vince Gill that is worthy of Eric Clapton. You can feel the ghost of Muddy Waters haunting the track. When asked about working with the country superstar Oates said, “Vince is a painter. He has this great imagination. His playing may not be flashy, but it always gives the track an amazing quality. Seeing him this way, as a painter, really crystallized the song for me.”
In his early days, Oates grew up in the shadow of some of the great musicians known in the American folk and blues scene of the early 60’s. It was the era of the folk music revival brought on, in part, by Pete Seeger and the Newport Folk Festival. But, when asked how an 80’s pop star has found his way to roots music today, Oates was quick to remind me, ” People forget that Philadelphia, where I grew up, had an unbelievable folk tradition. It was home to the oldest folk festival in America, second only to Newport.”
Along with the legendary Philly-soul sound, this folk and blues music of the era became the soundtrack for Oates coming of age. Already a avid collector of rock and roll and R&B singles, when a friend of his brother’s brought home his folk and blues collection, Oates was hooked. He picked up the acoustic guitar and began to learn from the recordings of Doc Watson, Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson, Dave Van Ronk and Son House. This is the music that became his musical foundation as much as R&B and rock & roll. These were his roots. He took lessons from a blues guitarist, Jerry Ricks, who booked acts for the local folk music venue, The Second Fret. Ricks was also close friends with Dick Waterman who managed most of the blues greats of the day and engineered the Philadelphia Folk Festival. As a result, when someone like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House or Doc Watson came to town, young John Oates found himself sitting in the same room with these legendary musicians. With his own natural talent and influences like this, it’s no wonder he has held onto such a clear musical vision over the last 50 years.
When Oates met Daryl Hall in 1967, the two musicians eventually began a long journey to success. It would take seven years of sometimes undefined, experimental and directionless recordings(they were once produced by Robert Fripp!) before they scored their first hit,”Sara Smile,” in 1976. It was followed by an unprecedented flood of well-crafted hits including “Kiss is On My List,” “She’s Gone,” “Rich Girl,” and “Private Eyes,” among many others. Today they are regarded as the most successful duo in popular music history. During our conversation, all of this was summed up by Oates as the days of ‘satin pants and big hair.’
Today, John Oates enjoys his role as a well-deserved elder statesman of rock and roll and Americana. A close listen to his development over the years and his output since his first solo album was released in 2008, reveals how much of a pioneer of the Americana brand he has been. Get past the glossy celebrity of pop success and his work with Hall & Oates alone stands out as an amazingly imaginative collaboration between two gifted musicians where the ego collisions were minimal.
As he has moved on today with his website, Good Road To Follow, he also thrives on frequent collaborations. Recently he has recorded two songs with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He has also worked with Jim James of My Morning Jacket. Last summer he jammed onstage with MMJ during their tour with Bob Dylan. As he continues down that Good Road To Follow, it’s a pleasure to take the journey with him as he finds his way home to where he began in the heartland of American music.