Singer, songwriter, musician, and producer Rob Lamothe rose to fame as the lead vocalist for the Los Angeles rock band Riverdogs. His 1996 soul-stirring debut solo album, 'Gravity' introduced an introspective side to his song writing, exploring the human experience and blending folk, rock, blues, and Americana with deep, reflective lyrics. An award-winning artist, he has shared stages with everyone from Guns' n' Roses to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra & Ron Sexsmith. He continues to create soulful, raw and authentic new sounds for music connoisseurs. We caught up with Rob for a chat about collaborating, working closely with Vivian Campbell, and his current projects. Riverdog; Eamon O'Neill.
Hi Rob, how are you doing?
I'm doing great. I'm happy to be home. I had an amazing trip recently through the Netherlands, part of Germany, and I spent some time in Paris and in London. That was all amazing. I got home on Monday, and yeah, I feel good. I got to Yesterday, we watched some eagles down by the lake near our house, and they had a baby this year, so it's big, it's huge, this thing, but yeah, we got a really good view of it yesterday, and it sat and looked at us. That was so cool.
Not a lot of people can say they saw something like; what part of the world is it you're in?
We're in Canada, so I'm about forty-five minutes north of Buffalo, on the Grand River that runs into Lake Erie. It's about ninety minutes on a really good day of traffic, getting to Toronto.
You mentioned your recent tour; is that your first time touring Europe for a while?
I was last there in late October, early November. My eldest son, Josh, he's 35, and he and I toured and we did a bunch of shows in the Netherlands, a couple of shows in Belgium, and then he flew back home, and I went and did some shows in Germany on my own, and then I flew to London, actually, to see my younger son's band at the time. He was playing in London for their first time. So, yeah, I had been in 2018 and obviously then the pandemic slowed the travel thing down quite a bit, and I got involved in a couple of big projects, so it's taken me a while to get to the point where I could go over this year and do some shows.
The last time we spoke was in 2017, and that was ahead of the release of a new Riverdogs album; what was it like for you to be bringing out a new Riverdogs release that far own the line?
Oh my gosh, it was a dream come true. Over the decades we would get together and we would write and just hang out and record. It was very casual, and we did one release in - it might have been 2006 or something - anyway, we did one called 'World Gone Mad', and it was more like an EP, I guess, but it was kind of cobbled together from different sessions and different times, whereas with this album that we released in 2017 'California', Viv reached out to the band and said; "hey, Frontiers [records] is asking if we might want to make a Riverdogs record", and of course, we all said yes, but then we didn't really have a direction and, like, what do you do? You know, like; "okay, we can make a proper album!".
So that changed the approach to writing a new Riverdogs album?
It was enough money to actually spend time together writing, and just hanging out and properly recording and all that. So we felt it was a huge opportunity, but we didn't really know what we wanted to do. What do we do after all these years? There's a lot of options. Everybody's at the top of their game individually, so it was a little bit of like, there's so many things we could do with this opportunity. But then Frontiers said; "we would love for you to make a record like the first one", and not everyone in the band universally thought that was a great idea, but I was like; "this is it! Guys this gives us a direction, a starting point. This is wonderful. It's a gift". It really was, because then it just flew; everything flowed so freely because we're creative people, and we didn't do it all separately in our little home studio kind of thing, and we wrote in a new way. We wrote all together in a room, and we had never done that before. On that first album, I was the main writer, and this time, it was this equal, democratic way of creating, and it was effortless. It was so beautiful. And that's how we made 'California', so, yeah, that was a fun record to make,
Was there any other differences in writing? I guess Viv was just our of Whitesnake around the first album, but he'd been in Def Leppard for more than three decades in 2017.
I mean, obviously Vivian had done very well with Dio and Whitesnake and stuff, but I think going to Def Leppard and being with them consistently for that whole time since, he's got a real identity and a recognisability and a stature as well.
Did that change things?
Well, I mean, when I met Viv, he was producing the Riverdogs demos before we had a record deal or anything. This was back in 1989 if I remember, and I already thought he was a rock star. He was; he had been in Dio, for one thing, and now he was in Whitesnake, and at that time, that was a huge band. So to me, he was the rock star, and I met rock stars before, but he was the nicest, most down to earth rock star that I had ever met, so he certainly didn't come in and throw his weight around like; "okay, guys, I'm in Whitesnake", or whatever. He was just super down to earth, and super cool, as he is today. If I text him or if I email him today, he'll get back to me by tonight. He's just the most conscientious, sweet person. Honestly, he's just a lovely person. So, well, he's Irish, so of course, yeah - I threw that in for you. Eamon,
Viv is a great guy; I've interviewed him a few times.
Yeah, even for these sessions for for the California album in 2016 you know, like I said, it was all really free. We didn't decide how we were going to write. We knew we had a direction, and then my concept was; "hey, what if we are in a time machine and we released the first Riverdogs record in June of 1990, we've been on tour for a year and a half, and now we're in this house in Eagle Rock in LA and now we're going to write". I said; "what if that was our headspace?", which was amazing. Like, it couldn't have been freer if we'd been on drugs or something! We were like hippies in the Hollywood Hills writing songs with just no notion of if anybody's going to hear it or dig it; it didn't matter.
And Vivian was a big part of that?
Viv was a huge part of that. We rented a house in Eagle Rock, and he would be like, listening to ideas on his phone because, of course, he has five thousand "widdly bits" on his phone, as he would call them, and I'd be making coffee, and I'd say; "Viv, what's that?" I'd hear some cool little thing he'd be playing, even just acoustically on his electric guitar. I'd go; "that's cool". and that's how we started almost every day. The very first day I had brought two songs in 'American Dream' and 'The Revolution Starts Tonight', which I had started, and I had worked on quite a bit with my son, Xander, who's a killer drummer, and so he ended up with song writing credit on those two songs, appropriately. That was super cool, but I brought in those two and everything else just came. Mark Danzeisen, the drummer, picked up a guitar, and he started doing something, and he showed us an idea, and we would just grab the thing, or somebody started jamming along, and that's how it developed, so organically.
I'm doing great. I'm happy to be home. I had an amazing trip recently through the Netherlands, part of Germany, and I spent some time in Paris and in London. That was all amazing. I got home on Monday, and yeah, I feel good. I got to Yesterday, we watched some eagles down by the lake near our house, and they had a baby this year, so it's big, it's huge, this thing, but yeah, we got a really good view of it yesterday, and it sat and looked at us. That was so cool.
Not a lot of people can say they saw something like; what part of the world is it you're in?
We're in Canada, so I'm about forty-five minutes north of Buffalo, on the Grand River that runs into Lake Erie. It's about ninety minutes on a really good day of traffic, getting to Toronto.
You mentioned your recent tour; is that your first time touring Europe for a while?
I was last there in late October, early November. My eldest son, Josh, he's 35, and he and I toured and we did a bunch of shows in the Netherlands, a couple of shows in Belgium, and then he flew back home, and I went and did some shows in Germany on my own, and then I flew to London, actually, to see my younger son's band at the time. He was playing in London for their first time. So, yeah, I had been in 2018 and obviously then the pandemic slowed the travel thing down quite a bit, and I got involved in a couple of big projects, so it's taken me a while to get to the point where I could go over this year and do some shows.
The last time we spoke was in 2017, and that was ahead of the release of a new Riverdogs album; what was it like for you to be bringing out a new Riverdogs release that far own the line?
Oh my gosh, it was a dream come true. Over the decades we would get together and we would write and just hang out and record. It was very casual, and we did one release in - it might have been 2006 or something - anyway, we did one called 'World Gone Mad', and it was more like an EP, I guess, but it was kind of cobbled together from different sessions and different times, whereas with this album that we released in 2017 'California', Viv reached out to the band and said; "hey, Frontiers [records] is asking if we might want to make a Riverdogs record", and of course, we all said yes, but then we didn't really have a direction and, like, what do you do? You know, like; "okay, we can make a proper album!".
So that changed the approach to writing a new Riverdogs album?
It was enough money to actually spend time together writing, and just hanging out and properly recording and all that. So we felt it was a huge opportunity, but we didn't really know what we wanted to do. What do we do after all these years? There's a lot of options. Everybody's at the top of their game individually, so it was a little bit of like, there's so many things we could do with this opportunity. But then Frontiers said; "we would love for you to make a record like the first one", and not everyone in the band universally thought that was a great idea, but I was like; "this is it! Guys this gives us a direction, a starting point. This is wonderful. It's a gift". It really was, because then it just flew; everything flowed so freely because we're creative people, and we didn't do it all separately in our little home studio kind of thing, and we wrote in a new way. We wrote all together in a room, and we had never done that before. On that first album, I was the main writer, and this time, it was this equal, democratic way of creating, and it was effortless. It was so beautiful. And that's how we made 'California', so, yeah, that was a fun record to make,
Was there any other differences in writing? I guess Viv was just our of Whitesnake around the first album, but he'd been in Def Leppard for more than three decades in 2017.
I mean, obviously Vivian had done very well with Dio and Whitesnake and stuff, but I think going to Def Leppard and being with them consistently for that whole time since, he's got a real identity and a recognisability and a stature as well.
Did that change things?
Well, I mean, when I met Viv, he was producing the Riverdogs demos before we had a record deal or anything. This was back in 1989 if I remember, and I already thought he was a rock star. He was; he had been in Dio, for one thing, and now he was in Whitesnake, and at that time, that was a huge band. So to me, he was the rock star, and I met rock stars before, but he was the nicest, most down to earth rock star that I had ever met, so he certainly didn't come in and throw his weight around like; "okay, guys, I'm in Whitesnake", or whatever. He was just super down to earth, and super cool, as he is today. If I text him or if I email him today, he'll get back to me by tonight. He's just the most conscientious, sweet person. Honestly, he's just a lovely person. So, well, he's Irish, so of course, yeah - I threw that in for you. Eamon,
Viv is a great guy; I've interviewed him a few times.
Yeah, even for these sessions for for the California album in 2016 you know, like I said, it was all really free. We didn't decide how we were going to write. We knew we had a direction, and then my concept was; "hey, what if we are in a time machine and we released the first Riverdogs record in June of 1990, we've been on tour for a year and a half, and now we're in this house in Eagle Rock in LA and now we're going to write". I said; "what if that was our headspace?", which was amazing. Like, it couldn't have been freer if we'd been on drugs or something! We were like hippies in the Hollywood Hills writing songs with just no notion of if anybody's going to hear it or dig it; it didn't matter.
And Vivian was a big part of that?
Viv was a huge part of that. We rented a house in Eagle Rock, and he would be like, listening to ideas on his phone because, of course, he has five thousand "widdly bits" on his phone, as he would call them, and I'd be making coffee, and I'd say; "Viv, what's that?" I'd hear some cool little thing he'd be playing, even just acoustically on his electric guitar. I'd go; "that's cool". and that's how we started almost every day. The very first day I had brought two songs in 'American Dream' and 'The Revolution Starts Tonight', which I had started, and I had worked on quite a bit with my son, Xander, who's a killer drummer, and so he ended up with song writing credit on those two songs, appropriately. That was super cool, but I brought in those two and everything else just came. Mark Danzeisen, the drummer, picked up a guitar, and he started doing something, and he showed us an idea, and we would just grab the thing, or somebody started jamming along, and that's how it developed, so organically.
That's the beauty of collaboration, and you're actually paying it back; bringing things back to the present day, and you're collaborated with the First Nations artists, and youths in Canada for your forthcoming album.
Yeah, so, starting back over a decade ago, I was working up the river from me up the Grand River at a recording studio. I became the general manager, and it is on what's called an Indian reserve - that's what it's called in Canada. It's really the name of it is six nations of the Grand River territories, and, yeah, I started, for the first time my life, meeting Indigenous artists and being exposed to this history of music that I knew nothing about; centuries of musical influences that people were bringing into the studio. And I ended up producing an album for a young band that was made up of indigenous and non-indigenous young people, and it won an award, and that just kind of started this collaboration.
So that inspired you to take things further?
I started not just being in the studio, but collaborating with a choreographer on some of her projects. So the band I was talking about is called the Ollivanders. The choreographer, dancer, multimedia artist is Santee Smith, and that was kind of my starting point, and of course, then I started meeting more indigenous artists, and it's just carried on from there. That's kind of where my musical community is, you know, forty-five minutes up the river here from me. And, yeah, I did a lot of work. I played with a guy called Logan Staats, and I played in his band for like, the last eight years, and I just resigned from his band six months ago because I had to start working on my own stuff, but now I'm working with with his sister, Layla Staats, and it's just a thing that's happened that just feels very natural. I never would have imagined I'd be working so much with Indigenous artists, but it just happened, so I'm just going with it.
Talk to me about your work with young people.
One of the projects that Logan and I did was we got a grant to write a song about water, and the importance of water, and our proposal was to write with over two hundred young people. So we went into schools with one of the indigenous people on the indigenous team for the school board, and her name's Susie Miller, and she came in and talked to all the students - indigenous and non Indigenous - about the treaties and the land that we live on, and the importance of water. And then we learned from the kids, and we listened to the kids, and we wrote a song. So that just came out - well, it never had an actual release - but we just finished the project. Then last year, a school from another school board used that song to build a play around. So I'm releasing that song, called 'We Are the Water' on my record that I'm working on right now.
How far along are you on your new album?
I'm five songs in, and, yeah, that's where all that collaborating just happened kind of naturally. I learned a lot being in a rock and roll band and traveling. You learn a lot about how the world really works. When you're in a band, sleeping in a van or sleeping on people's floors, you're trying to get paid at the end of the night, and people don't always want to pay you. You run into every kind of weird situation; you get there and the club is closed, there's chains on the doors, so you learn a lot traveling with with a rock band. So I had a lot of skills that came in really handy for two things; for crisis work, which I've also done, and for artistic collaboration, I have a song that says; "I forgot the master plan", and on this tour, I said that afterwards, I said, there never has been a plan. I never had a plan; I just kind of go with the flow, which is a good way to collaborate. So I've picked up some some collaborative skills over the years.
From collaborating with Vivian Campbell in California to all if this; it's amazing world experience, isn't it?
I think it's as you get older, you get more open minded. The first time someone asked me if I wanted to work with kids, I said; "no!" I was like; "I don't know. Why would I want to do that?" I was just used to that competitive mentality in Southern California. It was really competitive; the music business was, a battle. Everybody was trying to get a record deal. There was kind of only one way to get one then, which was impress a major label in Hollywood. So it was pretty cutthroat, and living in that world, I got pretty single minded, and pretty much like; "okay, what is our thing, and how do we make it better than everyone else's?", which is kind of ridiculous, but it's what we were all doing. And all the rock bands were getting signed, you know, this was back in the mid '80s, and my old bands; Aircraft and Mac Meda, we would go to LA and we would generate some heat amongst major labels or major league managers and all that, but then you also get humbled along the way, and those big things that are about to happen don't happen. It crashes and burns, which is a blessing in the end, because you learn that this is a journey and this isn't just; "oh, there's my target. I'm going to hit it", boom,! Success! So you kind of relax and find your way, and hopefully your mind actually broadens, and your perspective broadens.
And that has translated well to your current activities.
Fortunately, something made me say; "well, give this thing a try, working with young people", and; "give this thing a try working with indigenous people. You don't know anything about the history of indigenous people on this land. You have no clue, but you're going to just get into this world and be creative in this, in an intimate studio environment". So I guess it takes not just an open mind, but a little bit of courage to go into spaces that you're not familiar with, and it's worked out really well for me. It's been beautiful, and it's worked out for the people that I've collaborated with, so I'm really grateful to be where I'm at.
You recently released a single 'I Want to Swim in the Big Dipper'; is that the result of a collaboration, or is that purely you?
Thank you for asking. I'm playing all the instruments, and there's a couple songs on this album, probably close to half will be me playing all the instruments, but then I got someone like Vivian Campbell that jumps in on another song playing guitar. That song came about because I was collaborating with a friend who's a writer. He just released his first book called 'Dinner at God's House', and it's doing very nicely. His name's Todd Lieman, and he's based near San Francisco, and we got this idea; "we're both different kinds of writers, but let's collaborate". We had a mutual friend who is my manager, and we said; "let's try this and see what happens". So he kind of writes poems, and that's what I was looking at, and I said; "can I take this poem of yours and kind of deconstruct it?", and we talked about what it was about to him, what it could be about to me, and we talked about the themes in this piece, and he had these kind of reoccurring themes throughout some of his other works, so I deconstructed the words and then I started getting some ideas for the music and the feel of it to reflect that dreamy quality.
That sounds fascinating.
It's kind of a dreamy song. It's just a song about wishing and imagining and remembering being a little kid, and that's where that song came from. It. I love that song so much. I feel like it makes me feel like one. It reminds me of when I was a little kid and I could just dream about anything, including that the big dipper is somehow filled with water and I'm going to dive into it. I just loved that idea of Todd's, and we just expanded on that. It's just a simple song; literally three chords through more most of it, and there were some people that helped us choose it as the first single.
Yeah, so, starting back over a decade ago, I was working up the river from me up the Grand River at a recording studio. I became the general manager, and it is on what's called an Indian reserve - that's what it's called in Canada. It's really the name of it is six nations of the Grand River territories, and, yeah, I started, for the first time my life, meeting Indigenous artists and being exposed to this history of music that I knew nothing about; centuries of musical influences that people were bringing into the studio. And I ended up producing an album for a young band that was made up of indigenous and non-indigenous young people, and it won an award, and that just kind of started this collaboration.
So that inspired you to take things further?
I started not just being in the studio, but collaborating with a choreographer on some of her projects. So the band I was talking about is called the Ollivanders. The choreographer, dancer, multimedia artist is Santee Smith, and that was kind of my starting point, and of course, then I started meeting more indigenous artists, and it's just carried on from there. That's kind of where my musical community is, you know, forty-five minutes up the river here from me. And, yeah, I did a lot of work. I played with a guy called Logan Staats, and I played in his band for like, the last eight years, and I just resigned from his band six months ago because I had to start working on my own stuff, but now I'm working with with his sister, Layla Staats, and it's just a thing that's happened that just feels very natural. I never would have imagined I'd be working so much with Indigenous artists, but it just happened, so I'm just going with it.
Talk to me about your work with young people.
One of the projects that Logan and I did was we got a grant to write a song about water, and the importance of water, and our proposal was to write with over two hundred young people. So we went into schools with one of the indigenous people on the indigenous team for the school board, and her name's Susie Miller, and she came in and talked to all the students - indigenous and non Indigenous - about the treaties and the land that we live on, and the importance of water. And then we learned from the kids, and we listened to the kids, and we wrote a song. So that just came out - well, it never had an actual release - but we just finished the project. Then last year, a school from another school board used that song to build a play around. So I'm releasing that song, called 'We Are the Water' on my record that I'm working on right now.
How far along are you on your new album?
I'm five songs in, and, yeah, that's where all that collaborating just happened kind of naturally. I learned a lot being in a rock and roll band and traveling. You learn a lot about how the world really works. When you're in a band, sleeping in a van or sleeping on people's floors, you're trying to get paid at the end of the night, and people don't always want to pay you. You run into every kind of weird situation; you get there and the club is closed, there's chains on the doors, so you learn a lot traveling with with a rock band. So I had a lot of skills that came in really handy for two things; for crisis work, which I've also done, and for artistic collaboration, I have a song that says; "I forgot the master plan", and on this tour, I said that afterwards, I said, there never has been a plan. I never had a plan; I just kind of go with the flow, which is a good way to collaborate. So I've picked up some some collaborative skills over the years.
From collaborating with Vivian Campbell in California to all if this; it's amazing world experience, isn't it?
I think it's as you get older, you get more open minded. The first time someone asked me if I wanted to work with kids, I said; "no!" I was like; "I don't know. Why would I want to do that?" I was just used to that competitive mentality in Southern California. It was really competitive; the music business was, a battle. Everybody was trying to get a record deal. There was kind of only one way to get one then, which was impress a major label in Hollywood. So it was pretty cutthroat, and living in that world, I got pretty single minded, and pretty much like; "okay, what is our thing, and how do we make it better than everyone else's?", which is kind of ridiculous, but it's what we were all doing. And all the rock bands were getting signed, you know, this was back in the mid '80s, and my old bands; Aircraft and Mac Meda, we would go to LA and we would generate some heat amongst major labels or major league managers and all that, but then you also get humbled along the way, and those big things that are about to happen don't happen. It crashes and burns, which is a blessing in the end, because you learn that this is a journey and this isn't just; "oh, there's my target. I'm going to hit it", boom,! Success! So you kind of relax and find your way, and hopefully your mind actually broadens, and your perspective broadens.
And that has translated well to your current activities.
Fortunately, something made me say; "well, give this thing a try, working with young people", and; "give this thing a try working with indigenous people. You don't know anything about the history of indigenous people on this land. You have no clue, but you're going to just get into this world and be creative in this, in an intimate studio environment". So I guess it takes not just an open mind, but a little bit of courage to go into spaces that you're not familiar with, and it's worked out really well for me. It's been beautiful, and it's worked out for the people that I've collaborated with, so I'm really grateful to be where I'm at.
You recently released a single 'I Want to Swim in the Big Dipper'; is that the result of a collaboration, or is that purely you?
Thank you for asking. I'm playing all the instruments, and there's a couple songs on this album, probably close to half will be me playing all the instruments, but then I got someone like Vivian Campbell that jumps in on another song playing guitar. That song came about because I was collaborating with a friend who's a writer. He just released his first book called 'Dinner at God's House', and it's doing very nicely. His name's Todd Lieman, and he's based near San Francisco, and we got this idea; "we're both different kinds of writers, but let's collaborate". We had a mutual friend who is my manager, and we said; "let's try this and see what happens". So he kind of writes poems, and that's what I was looking at, and I said; "can I take this poem of yours and kind of deconstruct it?", and we talked about what it was about to him, what it could be about to me, and we talked about the themes in this piece, and he had these kind of reoccurring themes throughout some of his other works, so I deconstructed the words and then I started getting some ideas for the music and the feel of it to reflect that dreamy quality.
That sounds fascinating.
It's kind of a dreamy song. It's just a song about wishing and imagining and remembering being a little kid, and that's where that song came from. It. I love that song so much. I feel like it makes me feel like one. It reminds me of when I was a little kid and I could just dream about anything, including that the big dipper is somehow filled with water and I'm going to dive into it. I just loved that idea of Todd's, and we just expanded on that. It's just a simple song; literally three chords through more most of it, and there were some people that helped us choose it as the first single.
It sounds beautiful; what guitars are you using on there?
I play Godin guitars. I have a bunch of other guitars, probably too many, but the model is called an Icon Two, and that's my main guitar. I think it was kind of a limited edition, these guitars, but the bodies kind of look like a [Gibson] Les Paul-ish, like a curvier, sexier, Les Paul, but it's chambered, so it's semi-hollow. It's a chambered body, but it has the Seymour Duncan P-Rail pickups, so it's a three way pickup; it's a humbucker, it's a P-90, and it's a single coil, in one pickup. The Seymour Duncan P-Rail, they're amazing. You can get that kind of clean, shiny sound like you're talking about on the verse, and doing the thing with the delay and playing off of it, and kind of hammering on, but a soft, like a gentle hammer on, kind of thing. Yeah, that's really kind of dreamy.
You mentioned Vivian Campbell is going to be playing on the album, and I'm guessing it's going to be on a track with a similar laid back style.
It is. It's a similar, laid back, clean Tele [Fender Telecaster] on the one song. The thing about Viv is, I've known two guitar players in my life, a guy named Jamie Oaks and a guy named Vivian Campbell, who are like global; for me, the best of the best, and I know a few best of the bests on guitar! I know some, but they're the two that are never looking for; "what's that moment for me to burn? When are you going to unleash my me?!"; they're never waiting for that moment to have the spotlight, which is incredible. Someone like Viv, I know in my heart he'd be more than content, playing like, second rhythm guitar in a band; he'd like and kill it. He's just so humble, and if you need someone to burn on guitar, he will take it to the stratosphere. I've seen him do it so many times; if that's what the song calls for, he'll go for it. Otherwise, he's pretty laid back on guitar, he's pretty chill, and from the day I met him, that's how he was.
You're doing us a favour, showcasing another side to Vivian.
Well, I'll tell you something. Viv and I, we have talked and not even that long ago while he was in rehearsals for Def Leppard for this stadium tour. This was just two months ago. They were in LA rehearsing, and he shot some video for a song called 'Refugees', which is also on my new record. So he's playing on the song, and he's also in the music video. But we've talked over the last couple years about making a record, maybe it's an EP, I don't know, but doing a project where he and I are co-lead singers, like the Rembrandts kind of vibe, because he's a killer singer. He's an amazing harmony background singer, for sure, but he's a killer lead vocalist, and I feel very sure that it's certainly something that he and I both want to do.
So you and Vivian Campbell could potentially be doing a whole album as a duo?!
We've talked about it multiple times. I'm not saying something outrageous right now, so, you know, he is a little busy, and I don't even know how long this stadium tour goes on, but it's something that he sends me some very sweet emails about, and I sent him some sweet emails about it as well. So it's something we want to do, depending on the timing. So we're going to try and make that happen, and that's a side of Viv that's never really, you know, he peaked out on a couple lead vocal lines on the first Riverdogs record, and he made a record with his band, Clock, and he made a blues record at one point, but to really like collaborate on a project where he's a co-lead singer, I really look forward to that, because I love his voice.
Before I let you go, what's coming up next for you? Obviously, you're working towards the album; have you got a release date?
No release date because Dan Nevin from Bordertown Sound, the fledging record label that got launched with the reissue of my solo album 'Gravity', he's given me just free reign; "do whatever you want creatively, whatever the timing is". However this thing rolls out is fine, so I have that luxury. And I'm recovering. I had emergency surgery on my left eye, and I have to recover from this. So it'll be a couple more months before I have my vision back, so that's probably going to slow me down a little bit on some things, but yeah, I'm not pressed to get the rest of that album done. I'm just going to take my time. I'm still jet lagged, but other than that, really my focus is I'm editing a couple of projects. and I'm editing one right now, I haven't gotten back into it since I got back from Europe, so I have to get back to that. Then, I'm working with Layla Staats, and we are working on her debut album, and she's a killer. I have huge, huge admiration for her as a person, and I'm just honoured to get to work with her on her debut album, so that's going to be my musical focus for the next several months.
For all things Rob Lamothe, visit:
https://roblamothe.com/
https://www.bordertownsound.com/
https://www.facebook.com/roblamothe
https://www.instagram.com/roblamothe/
https://www.facebook.com/bordertownsound
https://www.instagram.com/bordertownsound/
https://www.tiktok.com/@bordertownsound
I play Godin guitars. I have a bunch of other guitars, probably too many, but the model is called an Icon Two, and that's my main guitar. I think it was kind of a limited edition, these guitars, but the bodies kind of look like a [Gibson] Les Paul-ish, like a curvier, sexier, Les Paul, but it's chambered, so it's semi-hollow. It's a chambered body, but it has the Seymour Duncan P-Rail pickups, so it's a three way pickup; it's a humbucker, it's a P-90, and it's a single coil, in one pickup. The Seymour Duncan P-Rail, they're amazing. You can get that kind of clean, shiny sound like you're talking about on the verse, and doing the thing with the delay and playing off of it, and kind of hammering on, but a soft, like a gentle hammer on, kind of thing. Yeah, that's really kind of dreamy.
You mentioned Vivian Campbell is going to be playing on the album, and I'm guessing it's going to be on a track with a similar laid back style.
It is. It's a similar, laid back, clean Tele [Fender Telecaster] on the one song. The thing about Viv is, I've known two guitar players in my life, a guy named Jamie Oaks and a guy named Vivian Campbell, who are like global; for me, the best of the best, and I know a few best of the bests on guitar! I know some, but they're the two that are never looking for; "what's that moment for me to burn? When are you going to unleash my me?!"; they're never waiting for that moment to have the spotlight, which is incredible. Someone like Viv, I know in my heart he'd be more than content, playing like, second rhythm guitar in a band; he'd like and kill it. He's just so humble, and if you need someone to burn on guitar, he will take it to the stratosphere. I've seen him do it so many times; if that's what the song calls for, he'll go for it. Otherwise, he's pretty laid back on guitar, he's pretty chill, and from the day I met him, that's how he was.
You're doing us a favour, showcasing another side to Vivian.
Well, I'll tell you something. Viv and I, we have talked and not even that long ago while he was in rehearsals for Def Leppard for this stadium tour. This was just two months ago. They were in LA rehearsing, and he shot some video for a song called 'Refugees', which is also on my new record. So he's playing on the song, and he's also in the music video. But we've talked over the last couple years about making a record, maybe it's an EP, I don't know, but doing a project where he and I are co-lead singers, like the Rembrandts kind of vibe, because he's a killer singer. He's an amazing harmony background singer, for sure, but he's a killer lead vocalist, and I feel very sure that it's certainly something that he and I both want to do.
So you and Vivian Campbell could potentially be doing a whole album as a duo?!
We've talked about it multiple times. I'm not saying something outrageous right now, so, you know, he is a little busy, and I don't even know how long this stadium tour goes on, but it's something that he sends me some very sweet emails about, and I sent him some sweet emails about it as well. So it's something we want to do, depending on the timing. So we're going to try and make that happen, and that's a side of Viv that's never really, you know, he peaked out on a couple lead vocal lines on the first Riverdogs record, and he made a record with his band, Clock, and he made a blues record at one point, but to really like collaborate on a project where he's a co-lead singer, I really look forward to that, because I love his voice.
Before I let you go, what's coming up next for you? Obviously, you're working towards the album; have you got a release date?
No release date because Dan Nevin from Bordertown Sound, the fledging record label that got launched with the reissue of my solo album 'Gravity', he's given me just free reign; "do whatever you want creatively, whatever the timing is". However this thing rolls out is fine, so I have that luxury. And I'm recovering. I had emergency surgery on my left eye, and I have to recover from this. So it'll be a couple more months before I have my vision back, so that's probably going to slow me down a little bit on some things, but yeah, I'm not pressed to get the rest of that album done. I'm just going to take my time. I'm still jet lagged, but other than that, really my focus is I'm editing a couple of projects. and I'm editing one right now, I haven't gotten back into it since I got back from Europe, so I have to get back to that. Then, I'm working with Layla Staats, and we are working on her debut album, and she's a killer. I have huge, huge admiration for her as a person, and I'm just honoured to get to work with her on her debut album, so that's going to be my musical focus for the next several months.
For all things Rob Lamothe, visit:
https://roblamothe.com/
https://www.bordertownsound.com/
https://www.facebook.com/roblamothe
https://www.instagram.com/roblamothe/
https://www.facebook.com/bordertownsound
https://www.instagram.com/bordertownsound/
https://www.tiktok.com/@bordertownsound
RSS Feed