Myles Kennedy On Singing, Influences, and Playing Guitar ⋆ Patriots Hemp

Those days are gone all right These are on the ground I tried to carry you And make you go but it was never know i must go When i’m gone When i’m gone I’ll give Yourself When i’m gone yes [Applause] more than i can take is y’all Is I will give you strength Me Is Awesome thanks brother miles kennedy everybody for those of you that don’t know miles i first heard of miles from his band mayfield 4 back in the i guess late 90s yeah and then you started with alterbridge i think 2004 maybe three yeah three yeah officially january 2nd 2004 yeah so begin 2004 and

You also have sung with slash yep i’ve been working with slash and the conspirators for a while a while yeah we did the first first song together in um september i think of 2009 yeah so it’s been a long a lot longer than i thought with both

Bands to be honest with you i’m surprised with how everything’s turned out because you know i always i was assumed in the music industry um you’d have your 15 minutes if that and then you’re you’re gone and um so i’m look at the fact that uh it’s been two decades between mayfield and

I’ve been very very very very lucky so i don’t know what happened so miles you’re coming through town here you’re touring yeah and talk about that you’re you’re out supporting a new record yeah got a little record i made uh called the ides march which is the second

It’s the second solo record and um i had some off unexpected off time i was uh supposed to be out touring and whatnot so i decided to um you know sit in my studio which is not nearly as cool as yours i have to say this is this has been my dream

Scenario here so um i’m such a massive fan of miles i mean he’s one of the greatest singers out there and he’s a phenomenal guitar player too no that’s true no no the guitar i mean i look i do really love the guitar but they’re guys out there who

Have total command of the instrument i mean i just you know he probably would probably follow some of the same guys on instagram and i’ll see some of these guys post and i’ll be like well i’m glad i can sing miles well that i mean that’s the thing

Is like we all wish we were singers at least i do i wish i could sing so you have really eclectic tastes in music but one person that we share we both are jeff buckley fans yeah yeah definitely yeah for me you know a lot of people point to kurt cobain as as

The 90s artist and i i agree he changed everything all those bands did i mean that entire movement was it was it was incredible i mean we hadn’t really seen anything like i don’t think we’ve seen anything quite like that not since then no that you know had

The ability to change pop culture i mean suddenly you had you know the fashion industry promoting flannel and combat roots you know right in malls exactly right exactly so that was that was a big deal that was that was really something else so for me as kind of a

It was it was an interesting time for me because i didn’t really feel like i fit in that realm that wasn’t um i was into jazz and fusion and but i loved rock i started as a rock kid yeah little rocker um but i really did like the harmonic uh

Content in a lot of fusion and jazz music and so i didn’t know and as a vocalist i hadn’t really found where i didn’t know that i was really going to be a singer at that point i was still a guitar player i worked at a

Music store and i saved up um i sold a bunch of guitar strings from this company called cayman and if you get the you get long story short you would get uh if you sold enough strings you could get like a free cd so i was like well i

Heard this guy named jeff buckley i heard this song i thought it sounds kind of cool so i ordered the cd and i remember taking it home and just being absolutely i was just he was mesmerizing i hadn’t heard anything quite like it you know it was just it was magic especially when

You heard his version of hallelujah yeah he’s talking about the grace album jeff’s i mean really jeff’s only yeah actual real real release so many young aspiring writers and singers and we we all heard that record and we’re just like you know what is that and it’s interesting with

The influence he had after that yeah there were there wouldn’t be a cold play there wouldn’t be i mean the muse yeah you know he um he was kind of the guidepost and he was taken from us way too soon i saw him perform once in seattle in

I think it was on the uh spring of 95. now you saw him yes i’m in the east village when i was living there yeah it was um i saw him play at chennai i was lived 500 feet from there i mean it was like literally right around the corner

He used to play there all the time and i met him one night here in in atlanta um you know where i hung out with them and stuff and and uh just a brilliant guy a lot of people don’t know he went to git you know that

And he was an excellent guitar player too and into a lot of the guys like allen holdsworth he was really into modern kind of shredding guitar and stuff which is really cool when you you know you would never get that right from his music except for the fact that he’s a really

Accurate guitar player like his his when he plays parts and everything you play them really well but and you would think and to think the thing that was amazing is you would think those are altered tunings right and most of those were in standard and helium the way the

Way his chord voicings were so brilliant and he utilized the open strings in a way where it would have that drone um yeah i feel like his guitar playing is kind of i don’t feel like he gets enough credit that’s brilliant brilliant guitar playing really is so i find it

Interesting too that you like people like pat matheny i do yeah so okay so pat my fanny who i never i still haven’t seen live just because uh it just isn’t it hasn’t quite worked out you know and that needs to change we we should do

That one day i would i would love to go see definitely with you that would be awesome so i my little brother who was we both played trumpet and um you know he’s my little brother right and he discovered jazz before i did and i was still a little

Rocker listening to to my hard rock and metal albums in the in the 80s and one one afternoon i’m sitting there and i hear something coming from his bedroom and i’m like what is that you know but he’s like my little brother right i’m not gonna go

Knock on the door and open it up and go you know what are you listening to david right and i remember just putting my ear to the door and i think i think it was third wind off the still life talking record yeah and i was just like

That is the most amazing thing i’ve ever heard and so finally i think i i think i had to kind of swallow my pride finally came out there okay what were you listening to and he’s like that’s pat mcphain that’s batman anger so yeah from that from that point forward in fact um

A lot of times when i would prepare for shows i listen to third wind the live version actually that was recorded the road uh that’s the uh yeah open to you or the remember it came out like 93 i think yeah it was like i think it was recorded in

In during around that period and so i love the live version of that because each of that break in that guitar solo right but like there’s something about him and lyle mays as composers and the way they work together yes you know it’s it’s the melody it’s just

You know aside from the shred you know how proficient he is as a guitar player for me more than anything it’s the his abilities as a composer yeah who are the people that you looked up to and uh that you feel like you come there’s like a direct lineage vocally from you jeff’s

Obviously one chris whitley yeah it’s a really big one another person who died really young yeah and just a phenomenal singer and guitar player yeah yeah like a lot of people don’t know who he is and and it’s unfortunate because he was once again he was an artist artist you

Know those of us who would hear those records you know dirt floor in particular yeah you’re just like where did that come from um genius uh that’s that would be one um ella fitzgerald i mean i i think she has one of the most perfect instruments um another one as

Far as female vocalists go would be katie lange i think her instinct and just the sound of her instrument is um oh she’s great could you imagine being a producer and getting to record that instrument no like right and unfortunately i couldn’t i mean like

It’s gotta be such a joy for a producer to have you know miles i can’t imagine recording you as a producer so that you know that’s oh i you know i don’t know you’d have to turn a lot of knobs and that’s that’s actually not true um uh no i mean i’m

I appreciate that but but as far as like the instrument just the the just the the the sonic like the way that the balance of the those instruments like between her and ella billy holliday there’s just something about the quality of those voices that i hear and go wow miles i started thinking

About this so miles other than pat metheny miles has the used to have the longest warm-up that would warm up for four hours miles warmed up a voice for like hour and a half two hours what was the longest you used to do you don’t do that anymore anymore no i

Don’t i heard miles warm up one time when he was at tree sound here in atlanta when you’re working on the first alderbridge record and miles was in this lounge for the for for studio a and he’s warming up i’m walking down the hall and i hear mormon up through the door and

Everything and i come back like an hour later he’s still warming up then i come back another hour later he’s still warming up he’s like my god is this unbelievable it’s like how do you even have any energy to sing after this but then you’re kind of ready to sing right well

Yeah i guess so i at that point to be honest with you i was i was technically i was doing it wrong it was like trying to force a square peg into a round hole and um so i had studied i’d taken a few lessons up to that point with a vocal coach

Amazing named ron anderson who’s to this day probably probably the most important part of the equation for me was having the opportunity to study with him a few times because he kind of unlocked the keys to the kingdom he was like he he he has this ability to um take

Your voice and really free it up but i’d only taken at that point like ten lessons with him and i hadn’t i hadn’t perfected the the uh technique yet it took a long time to get that one figured out and um so you heard me when i was literally just trying to

Force a square peg into a round hole because it was like well if i just keep you know pushing through this eventually it’s going to open up and the whole it it’s the it’s kind of like um with so many different things as a guitar player as a

As an athlete will tell you the same thing it’s about relaxing yeah you know it’s about having your placement just right it’s about your breath it’s all about the breath and that was something when you heard that cacophony in the warm-up room that i hadn’t quite uh fine-tuned just

Yet okay so miles you play guitar when you’re singing and tell me about how that affects your breathing when you actually have a guitar against you do you think about that does that actually affect how you sing do you practice singing your warm-up with the guitar on i don’t but

That’s a good idea i mean it does affect it though right sure yeah yeah it’s um i mean depending on how low you were your turf if you were at a proper level it doesn’t affect you right you know well what it’ll do is if i’m if i’m pressing with my diaphragm

You know a little bit um uh but yeah you know it’s it really is um crucial to have that support so i always talk about the or i don’t always talk about this is something ron brought up early on was it’s basically the muscles that you pee with as a

It’s like you kind of push those out as you’re going across your break and into the upper register to use your head voice yeah and so as long as that’s all in place and um there’s not a lot of i’m not using a lot of breath it’s a real subtle um

Real it’s a real subtle mechanism so i think the hardest thing for me as a singer and a guitar player especially now that i’m out touring as a three-piece yep you know it really you’re naked so any clam that you have and i trust me it’s it compounds doesn’t

Mean it’s no it’s it can be clam central some nights and uh you know i joke with the fans like just have your notebook out just how many times did he screw up that chord progression but uh that and that’s the hardest part it’s tr it’s like rubbing your head or patting

Your head rubbing your belly um because you have to remember the lyrics chord progression then if you gotta have a lead you gotta set things up there okay relax you know make sure your picking technique is right and um it’s just it’s a lot to it’s a lot to think about but

I love that challenge i love it because it’s like every night before going out on stage it’s like well here you go strap strap yourself in okay so miles how high like what’s what’s the highest note now you would sing in a set typically it’s not crazy high i’ve

Learned over the years that um the the long high notes yeah um if i want to maintain pitch in the lower register yep and control if i do a lot of that even if i’m using the right technique it’ll just kind of throw everything out of line and when you’re younger

I’ve heard you sing unbelievably high notes that they’re just effortless they seem to be this you know long time long time or so um yeah it’s but there’s a technique for doing that though right absolutely yeah and you shouldn’t what’s really cool about the technique it’s an old opera

Technique it’s called belcanto yeah that’s how you pronounce it yeah and it’s it’s amazing that they developed this like 300 i think 300 years ago from what i’ve been told so whoever whoever came up with the whole stumbled onto it because it’s a lot it’s a lot of like

Okay in your lower register your vowels do a certain thing so a’s go to a uh and as you go higher you know that huge that vowel changes and then you kind of like shoot it out the back of your head and it’s really complex and you’re you’re thinking about all this so

That for the first few years of learning the technique it was just run the scales and arpeggios over and over every night before you go on stage and it’s like anything it’s that it’s repetition and it’s uh i heard that i heard this great phrase recently uh neurons that fire together wire together

Oh yeah which is that’s an old saying that’s a true saying too absolutely absolutely if you just keep doing it over and over and you do it right yeah you train your brain eventually you don’t think about it anymore that’s what’s fascinating now it’s actually really beautiful if i’m if

I’m feeling good and rested and um i’m warmed up it’s about what i just attempted here um it’s open everything’s open and you’re it’s like riding a wave and it’s total freedom and it’s and it’s very it’s very zen-like i i think it’s probably like like when

You listen to coltrane not i’m not now i’m not trust me i’m not putting anything that i do in that realm but it’s that same sort of thing where an improviser when they’re really you can tell when they’re really in the zone yeah and it’s all just happening and they’re very present

And it’s the same thing vocally with you if you reach that point or you could just be a natural singer i don’t i i guess i’ve had to learn some tricks miles you’re a natural singer come on well there are people who are natural i i had a moderate amount of

Natural ability that through working with someone else’s a ridiculous amount of natural ability no no i mean i i mean i could carry tune and i could hear pitch but i it was something that i really worked on having the opportunity to study with someone who understood the mechanics of the human

Voice and from a from a physical physiological level and he would it’s funny we’d sit there and he’d go now this part of your and i won’t even try and repeat it because he’s a master right and uh but it was really cool to to

Learn all that and and that and he told me this this is what’s really great about it is that um he assured me and this was in 1997 when i took my first lesson with him and he said he said if you do this technique as you get older still have an instrument

You won’t lose your range you won’t lose your range and it’s true i mean you sound you sound as good as you did 20 some odd years ago when i first heard you it’s it’s different now i mean i gunned it a lot more then so there’s a

Lot more rasp yeah it was a lot more um it was kind of like putting the overdrive pedal on yeah which has a certain quality but i think that um just through the amount that i’ve toured over the years and i realized that the more that i did that it would fatigue the

Vocal cords i was like you know i’m more interested in trying to maintain pitch and maintain longevity let me ask you this did you ever have gigs where you would over sing like early on before and then you’d lose your falsetto for a bit or something or

If you tried to do a falsetto note that nothing would come out if you do too much full voice singing and uh hard singing that it that it affects your things like your falsetto and your control control definitely yeah falsetto not as much okay the falsetto and i think the falsetto came about

Because for years i was in um top 40 slash r b bands yeah it would give me the female high vocal part that i have to sing like i was singing falsetto to like you know whatever the the track the hit of the

Day was and so i had to learn to kind of survive with that but the control thing yeah you’re gunning it and you’re singing in your chest voice above you know a g yeah and then suddenly you know a song later like why is it all warbly and weird and why can’t

I hold pitch in my in a register normally where there’s no problem and so that’s what i had to learn was that control and it’s it really is all about the control and doing it over and over and over and that’s that was one of the things that not just practice but

Because i’ve been lucky enough to tour with all these bands and you know like in 2019 i was on the road or in the studio for 300 days that year so you’re constantly having the opportunity to practice in in in kind of in the um you know when you’re on stage it’s a

Different thing you got the adrenaline it’s a much different animal it’s a different totally different process so you do that for a decade or two and um it starts to become more natural the first record for major that that um i did with the mayfield four jerry harrison was the producer okay

Talking heads yeah yeah awesome dude yeah and but he kind of had his work cut out for him because i had um back then i had nasty i had a sinus issue for years in fact if i could go back and record pretty much anything before 2015

Before before i got it fixed yeah i just had kind of like a constant sinus infection and it was really problematic um so he you know we were in the studio and there was all this this construction going on so i had allergies and and we ended up having to leave we

Were in seattle at the studio we ended up having to finish the vocals down in san francisco uh in a studio that wasn’t being worked on uh but yeah i mean he it was trust me it was not an easy task uh to make that first mayfield 4 record

Because you’re dealing with the element and i didn’t know there’s so many things i didn’t understand as a young singer i didn’t understand how my instrument worked i should have said oh i’m allergic to this room you know as singers i think think initially when you start

Singing i should just be able to like talk it should just happen whenever it happens and that’s not the case it’s like there ha there are a lot of variables you know you want humidity is good um rest is paramount not talking a lot i love to talk i love

To converse and and and i’m notorious on the road for you know not doing press because it kind of takes the edge off yeah yeah and then pitch gets harder yeah during the show but i feel really and i always apologize to when i finally get to do

Press i’m like you know like we tried to get an interview during the tour but you know you couldn’t do it because you’re singing and i feel really bad like i don’t want to be like this standoff you know like i love this i love i love communicating especially talk about music but

Then i’m standing on stage in front of a bunch of people i’m like why can’t i hit that note oh yeah you know when i was talking to brian may about freddie mercury he told me that freddie on the first queen record was not a good singer i was really

Disappointed freddie was disappointed in his singing and he worked really hard to become a great singer and i always thought that that was interesting you know that it doesn’t matter who it is you have to most people that are the the you know that become these you know great great

Singers historically were people that learned to sing over recording themselves and hearing it back maybe getting a teacher you know there’s so many there you have to always have feedback on your singing especially by recording yourself that’s like a big big thing because people don’t they don’t realize what their

Pitch is like unless they they go and listen back to it they don’t develop strategies for um for how to track like getting a headphone mix things like that these are all really incredibly important things and obviously important for live performance i’m going to ask you about like in-ears and things like

That we had talked about this before but about about in-ears you use in-ears all the time now right you can’t live without them yeah i mean that was a big big thing for you to go to in-ears wasn’t it yeah well i started using in-ears

Early on in like the late 90s but the the technology hadn’t advanced um to where it is now they’re like i mean it’s a massively big difference now within ears right total game changer for singers having good in you know having a good in-ear mix yeah saves people’s voices

Really does you know when i when i see footage from say the 70s before they even had monitors these wedges yeah i have no idea how they were able to survive especially with some of these guys using not just hundred watt heads but like marshall majors of all things oh my goodness

Yeah so i really how did they even do it i don’t know i i mean the beatles sang in two and a shay stadium and they couldn’t even hear themselves and they still were saying never figure that out i know it’s crazy but yeah with uh

So i used uh jh the jh audio monitors and jerry harvey’s and and um and they’re they’re great i usually i think they’re called the gh13s and they’re it’s a very flat it’s really nice but in the in the top end it’s for me it’s about that top end

Hearing that mask right you know so that uh it helps me ride that way do you feel like you’re disconnected i mean how much of mark do you have in how much you’ve flipped do you have like what do you what’s your mix usually like it’s like

You mainly you right a lot of vocals i’ll pan my guitar to the right yeah pan mark to the left yep uh bass kind of in the middle drums kind of in the middle and the ball do you need much drums in there or not i like to i like to hear uh

The high hats yeah just to keep time yeah um because i one thing i don’t like is to be ahead as a singer yeah i like to sit in the pocket and flip’s got a great pocket do you ever feel disconnected from the audience though

With it or no yeah that’s that can be that’s the thing is the feedback from i mean feedback in that that the response from the audience that that’s the that’s the one drawback of in-ear monitors is that yeah it can cut you off yeah you you can you can put like two

Yeah and actually bring in the room sound like that but then you get a lot of access you get all the symbol hash and things like that that you don’t want to have in there but the nice thing when you can’t hear the crowd is if that dude is screaming you suck

You have no idea you don’t have to just like i’m having a great time so um yeah i mean it is it definitely is at first it’s a little bit weird and that’s why a lot of artists push push push especially guitar players yeah and it it screws with your guitar

Playing too though like because it’s right there going into your ear is there any delay if you use any type of digital plug-ins or anything do they have any any type of latency that that you notice or no i don’t notice anything okay no i was wondering i wondered about that

If you’re going through digital if you have a digital monitor console if there’s any type of uh any latency or anything like that you’ve got it down to a science yeah yeah no that would that would be pretty bad i couldn’t deal with that yeah that would be brutal you

Did my funny valentine with chris cornell for his wife’s what 40th birthday or so and and uh tell me about that experience about tuning tuning up your guitar well um it was it was an amazing experience but i had become it highlighted how i’ve become so um

Like so many of us i’ve come to rely on tuners i forget tuning my guitar and i was going to comp on the song as we sang it and i remember i had my my um guitar and we were in the basement getting ready to practice and i was

Trying to tune it up but i was nervous i’m sitting next to one of the greatest singers in the world and uh and uh he finally is just like hey let me let me i’ll do it i was i was crestfallen it was stressful the

Song that i’m gonna play is uh off the new record it’s called a thousand words and um it was actually inspired by a photograph that um someone sent my wife her father just passed away and it just it’s just this beautiful picture of her of her mother

Just standing over his grave and it just spoke uh you know just so much about our time our short time on this planet and our mortality and and how precious life is thousand words Lost in an image like a ghost [Applause] oh Will they say that a picture’s worth a That can be cause in times like these we must live and learn where will i go and i can write the wrong oh well i turn to when i don’t belong the things i took for granted way too long Anymore That can be The image in my mind just like the season’s Will Mercy that can’t be [Applause] we must Cause in times like these we must Awesome thank you brother miles thank you so much for uh for stopping by it’s been so great to meet you in person follow miles i’ll have all the links in the description for uh his tour dates and go out and see him when he comes to your town

Thanks man thank you it’s been an absolute honor thanks for having me thanks that’s all for now don’t forget to subscribe ring the bell and leave a comment check out my new quick lessons pro guitar course that just came out also the biato book if you want to learn about music theory

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