Will Turpin of Collective Soul Talks About New Record and Tour With Hootie & the Blowfish
WHO: Hootie & the Blowfish/ Collective Soul/ Edwin McCain
WHEN: Saturday, June 1 @ 7:00 pm
WHERE: Hollywood Casino Ampitheatre St. Louis
Tickets: Available online HERE
–by Randy Thompson
Rock band Collective Soul is about to embark on a 4-month North American tour with Hootie & the Blowfish. The tour, called Summer Camp With Trucks Tour, will also feature Edwin McCain and will land at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in Saint Louis June 1. You can get tickets HERE.
Collective Soul just released a new double album, Here to Eternity, and founding member Will Turpin took time to sit down with me to discuss the 30th anniversary of the band, recording, the new tour, the new record and more. If that were not enough to keep him busy, he is producing records at Reel 2 Reel Studios
Midwest Rewind – I really appreciate the time you’re taking to chat. Today’s a big day. Album release day.
Will Turpin – #12.
MWRW – #12 – 30 years later. Wow, that’s amazing. And it’s got to be very satisfying, isn’t it?
WT– Those are always satisfying, and that we still are, and always will be, a band.
You know, we kind of came from the studio. We were a little bit of studio rats, even in the beginning. And it’s still a part of us, it’s part of what keeps us going, keeps us alive.
It’s creating. So, yeah man, I’m still in that phase where I’m really proud of it. I’m always proud of all of our records. And even in the early days, we always were like, “OK now, once it gets released, what’s next”?
MWRW – Sure! Because the works behind you now. But it’s cool because you grew up in a studio. Your dad ran the Reel 2 Reel studio, right?
WT -Yeah, he built that studio. Kind of a ways to a means. He was a songwriter and, man, he built that studio in a basement of our home and that, you know, became our hub, the place where we all originated from.
There would not be this band without that studio.
MWRW– Sure, because Ed was an engineer there for a while, I understand. But you were friends prior to him even working at the studio, right?
WT – Yeah. we weren’t big friends, but I dld know his father. Yeah, you know, I’ve known all of them my whole life. I don’t have a memory where I didn’t. And being 7 and 1/2 years older than me, we weren’t necessarily friends until we were older, and he was engineering at my father’s studio. He would have been doing that for at least seven years, probably. He was one of the head engineers at the studio and that place was busy. There was a lot of recording going on. I think one of the first records that he did down there was a RuPaul record.
MWRW – That’s taking you back. But it really sounds like it was a great experience for you to grow up in that atmosphere.
WT – Yeah. I totally embraced it and embraced every instrument that I’ve ever picked up. And it was all around me my whole life. So, you know, at 53 years old, it’s still all I do… play or create music.
MWRW – So, Will, after 30 years in the music business, you’ve been producing records, touring, running a studio, and playing in a legendary band. What have you seen as some of the biggest changes over your three decades on the music scene?
WT – I guess the obvious shift would have been the technology of streaming and when we were first around, the only game in town was some type of record label and usually a major record label. You know, even the smaller record labels had offices and their own buildings. So that system has kind of gone away. Although, the major labels are still active, it’s just small. Like in our era, Atlantic Records would have had like 3 stories on the Time Warner building or three floors. And from what I hear, they’re down to half a floor. Well, all those pros are still out there in the industry and it’s just that it’s different. With Collective Soul, we release a record and we’ve got people that have been in the music industry going back 15 or 20 years, they were at major labels.
But it’s all outsourced to people we’ve known our whole lives and trust. So, you know, what we say is we’re releasing an independent record. That means we’re doing it. Technically, we’re outsourcing it for pros. We’re out there doing this. So that would be the shift. You’re not stepping. Into a label and signing a contract anymore. A lot of bands start out just doing it themselves and getting outsourcing for certain specialties, the special people that they need.
MWRW – It sounds like you are doing some recording with some young new performers at Reel 2 Reel, bringing artists in and you do concerts there.
WT – Oh yeah, the Lee Oscar thing. It’s really not a concert. It’s more like a Ted talk.
MWRW – Very cool. And The Way, your backing band for solo projects, performed there as well?
WT – Yeah, we got to doing stuff live and putting that out. We do that with a lot of bands. That’s a really cool way to just get. more content out there as a band. Or even as an individual, because we can do a quick mix, and get you comfortable in there. We’ll hear something acoustic, but it’s way better and it’s something that will last forever. It’s way better than to just put the mic on the side of your stage or whatever, you know?
So those work out. Yeah, this worked out really good for everybody.
MWR – It looks like you have a pretty solid crew in the studio. A group that’s been with you for a while.
WT – Johnson Becker’s been there over 20 years, and my buddy Brian Collins. He’s my partner in the production company and he’s. been a pro himself over the last 20 years. Yeah, I’m getting busy, so I need more people, but I do have a good team
MWRW – And you’re surrounding yourself with solid people. You’ve been with the same band, the same three guys, for 30 years. That’s pretty impressive.
WT – Yeah, like I said, I don’t have a memory without knowing those guys, and we grew up two streets over and, I would say, a modest, middle-class lifestyle. We didn’t want for much, but we did have fun, really. We grew up this little town called Stockbridge. Now we live on a bus together or on a plane.
MWRW – That’s a cool transition, to go from neighborhood guys to a band that’s reached such level of success and yet, you’re still moving on in a lot of directions. And you’ve known the musicians that you’re touring with, Hootie & The Blowfish and Edwin McCain, for 30 years as well.
WT – Yeah.
MWRW – Now you’re touring together all over the country and I guess what I’m wondering is, how would you describe the relationship that the band has with its fans over these three decades.
WT – Yeah, I mean it’s gotten kind of special with what you might call the core of Collective Souls fans. They’ve allowed this music to become part of the soundtrack to their lives. In many ways. There’s so many memories and even the sad part of losing. people and hearing the stories of my father’s favorite band or my father’s favorite song or even the happy stuff. “We got married to this song”, or “we met at your show”.
And all the time, we see three generations of people from a single family at our shows, you know. We’ll see a Grandfather, who’s in his late 50s and a father and a daughter or whatever. We’ll see three generations all the time, so it’s pretty special. We feel like when you’re younger, you’re creating music and you don’t know what you’re doing, but you know people. People use these dramatic terms. Tell us these stories and after a while it kind of sinks in and you’re like, oh, OK, this is really important and that’s what music is. My father used to say that music is the second most powerful force on Earth, second only to love. And stuff like that starts again as you get older and you keep doing this, and you keep having these exchanges with people who have allowed their views and your music to be part of their lives.
MWRW – Well, that and it’s really cool because with Reel 2 Reel, you’re bringing new musicians in and introducing them to new audiences and giving them an opportunity to form that kind of a bond as well. How does that feel?
WT – It just feels natural to me. It just feels like it’s my natural evolution. That’s what I tell people about what that studio was and is.
My legacy, and I mean that literally and that’s not using that word lightly. My dad formed that studio in 1976, and he passed away five years ago. I had been doing some side projects there and I was in and out. I walked in there maybe six weeks after he passed away and I just knew that I didn’t want to let the place go and that I was going to start running it and updated it. I’ve poured a lot of money and heart into it over the last year and a half. So, it’s been revamped, reimagined, and tell everybody, version 3.0.
The first version was a house in Stockbridge, the second version was when we moved to where we are now. That would have been 2001 when my dad built the studio.
It was built to be a studio from the ground up. And there’s not really any of those left, right? And then version. 3.0 is everything I’ve done to it in the last two years with updating it.
MWRW – And you’re keeping everything in Georgia, so the roots are the same.
WT – Yeah, man, Atlanta and Georgia. there’s something in the water. You know. It’s not like a music scene like Nashville, and it used to be a little more of a rock scene back in the day. But so many people come from Georgia that are either in Nashville or wherever. If you go down the list of musicians that have been from here, it’s really cool. I have a hand painted poster, (and I don’t know who did it). but it’s an outline of Georgia and you get every artist that’s ever come from any i part of the state. They tried to put their name and the town that they came from, but you can’t believe the list of people that this came to. Mickey Thomas, who was on our record, he came from a little town, Albany, GA, to Jefferson Starship in California. And I don’t know how that happened.
MWRW – Well, music makes connections, right?
WT – Well. absolutely, and those other connections you’re talking about, the fact that we, Hootie and Edwin have known each other for our whole careers. Not only that, we were on the same label 30 years ago, all three of us. So, we’ve got a great appreciation for each other. We’ve been around each other, see each other in our houses, but there’s a lot of love there. It’s gonna be fun.
MWRW – Speaking of fun, tell us about the making of the new album, a lot of those songs that you recorded at Elvis Presley’s mansion in Palm Springs. What was that experience like? Can you tell us a little bit about maybe how recording there affected the tone and feel of the album?
WT – Yeah, I mean, there was definitely an essence. That was part of us being in Palm Springs and working together. We’ve always. thought about the idea of being a band and how we like to be a band. We like to record as a band. We had a friend of a friend who. bought the place. It was in disrepair, as the previous owners had left it. It was just like the way that Elvis had left it. The owner didn’t know what he was gonna do with it. But we met the guy maybe four years ago and of course, our light bulbs came on. We were all like, “well, shit, we have got to record in it then. If we can.”
So, it took us about three years to get it planned and get him to sign off on it. But we brought our gear in there and set up in the same living room where Elvis actually recorded vocals on a couple of different records. The house had the same tiles that RCA Records put in his ceiling, little acoustic tiles. Yeah, by the way man, we just were a band and we went into Elvis’ old house every day to set up the engineer’s room.
And then there was Lisa Marie’s bedroom from when she was a baby. There is one room that’s black and white, a checkerboard kind of dance floor where his buds were hanging out with the records playing music. But yeah, I mean we just felt like something really good was going on. So maybe Elvis’s energy had something to do with it.
MWRW – What went into the album Here To Eternity? What were some of the concepts and ideas that you all felt were important?
What was the driving force behind the album?.
WT – We didn’t really start out thinking that it was going to be a double record. But things started going real quickly. We put on the calendar four weeks to record. By the end of the first, we said “well, let’s go for a double record”. And we probably got like 15 songs done at the Palm Springs Place and then we were able to bring in some nuggets that had kind of got lost in the wayside from COVID. Songs like ‘No Man’s Land’ had already been recorded at Eds house. It was kind of inspired by the COVID and the sociopolitical environment, everybody’s hot and hard. But that song is called “Bob Dylan, Where Are You Today?” It’s exactly like from his perspective,
So artistically and very cleverly, Ed turned the song into a question of “Hey? Where’s Bob Dylan to write this protest song right now, you know. We know he’s still alive, but where’s your song?”
MWRW – Because we need them.
WT – Yeah man, we needed it. And anyway, that’s what that song is. Not every one of the 20 songs was done in Palm Springs, but there were nuggets we brought in that fit. That record is so perfect. And you know, we still look at things like the vinyl record. Like we did with our hero. So, it’s like sad. I think the layout of the record is perfect.
MWRW – That’s wonderful. And the concert, how have you all come up with how you’re going to lay out the new songs with some of the classics?
WT – Yeah, we’ve already got a set list and we’ve got a 60 minute set so we’re coming out there and you don’t want to miss the first song with Collective Soul, because we’re going to be throwing rocks, throwing punches out of the gate. It’s going to be quick. We’re gonna combine songs. There’s not going to be a lot of downtime. We’re just going to go out in a flurry in that 60 minutes. Hopefully we can make everybody go, “OK? What was that?” You know, we’re throwing in some new songs and we will definitely play the hits as well.
MWRW – Well, sounds like you’re going to have a lot of fun on this tour. What do you have ahead regarding touring with your band, The Way?
WT – I’ve been doing an annual Christmas show. It’s just hard to keep a touring band together with my schedule. That being said. you know, there’s always that one mark in the big show we do at Southern Roots and Vice Ave. at McDonough, GA. And I get calls all the time for this festival or that show. And they’re always on weekends and. Uh, yeah, I’ve got other shows with this other rock band. You know, that’s just kind of tough. I am going to do another record so that will inspire more shows. I’m sure that I’ll be recording that. I’ve already started to work on finishing lyrics and do some of the stuff I can do ahead of time to help it go quicker but once I start recording these tunes, I hope to be close.
I don’t want to drag it out. I want to block out enough time to kind of get them all done. But I’ve already written 8 songs listed out that are super strong. I think they all go together and I’m working on that. I’m already visualizing the order of the CD. I work on how can I get down the road, before I even start recording, right now. I just have too much stuff going on.
MWRW – Yeah, you have a lot going with the studio and now you’re on tour, and your family considerations exist. So, you’re covering a lot of ground.
WT -Yes, and It feels like everything’s just natural and logical right now in my life.
MWRW – That’s great. You’ve got to work hard for that too, I’m sure.
WT – Yeah, we work hard. Well, we’re just lucky to be able to create music for a living.
MWRW – What advice would you give to young musicians who are trying to break into the business today?
WT – I always just tell people you know, we started out trying to be known for music.
I would just say study the good stuff. Study the records. Don’t be looking at trends or whatever was cool last week. I would say study the record, study the classics and then when it comes down to you’re creating,
I would say “stay true to what you feel, man”. Don’t ever do what you think other people will think is cool. It seldom works out. People are attracted to genuineness; they’re attracted to people who are sincere. So, if you’re sincere with your heart. You do what feels good. That’s ultimately what’s going to attract people to music.
MWRW – Yeah, that’s beautifully said. And it sounds like that’s been prevalent throughout your career because Collective Soul does touch people and so does the Way.
What can you tell us about how Serengeti Drivers came together? Because that was over a course of a few years. Wasn’t it?
WT – Yeah, I think that’s one reason why I’m trying to get a lot of things lined up before I start the next project. The kids were younger and I recorded most of that in a studio in my basement. So, it just took a while, Collective soul was super busy. Serengeti Drivers came out in early 2019 or late 2018. I would get home and the last thing I wanted to do was go start focusing on recording the final songs
Sometimes you’re not inspired by the grindy work of the studio and my kids were young. So I would get home and it took a while to get that one done. It’s a little different now and like I said, I definitely want to approach the next one like “OK, here’s three months to completely track a record. And then put it out”.
MWRW – Well, all of that will definitely keep your calendar full.
Speaking of full schedules, is there anything else on the upcoming tour that you’re looking forward to in particular? Have you toured with Hootie and Edwin before?
WT – Edwin a number of times. And we have definitely played festivals together in those 30 years. We’ve played a lot of shows together, but we’ve never done 40 something dates together. But we love throwing the bags. That’s one thing I’m looking forward to.
Me and Jesse will probably be setting those guys down there. (Chuckles).
MWRW ‐ That sounds awesome. I really appreciate your time and I did have one last question, if that’s OK? Do you have a favorite track on the new album and what makes it special to you? Or are there a couple that you particularly embrace and look forward to playing for the first time in front of the audiences, because you haven’t done it yet?
WT – Yeah, favorites are tough. And they change, right? My favorite song will change based on what is going on, or what I hear or what it inspires in me. I like the song, “Let it Flow” a lot. We were talking about recording that song and it ended up being the third track on the record. We were there in Palm Springs and we’re talking about the song, and we didn’t know how it was going to go.
But we’re basically done for the day and me, Jesse and Johnny started getting over there and just kind of working on it and we stumbled on stuff and then by the end of that day, we thought we were done, that we kind of had the right vibe. It became the proper song for us, a song called “Let it Flow”. So, I’m proud of that.
MWRW – That’s great. I’ll be listening. I can’t wait to get the album. See you in St. Louis. I’m bringing my 10-year-old grandson with me, so he’s looking forward to it.
WT – Yes, that’s what I’m talking about, a new generation. Introduce it to them.
Catch this tour all summer in these cities:
Summer Camp with Trucks Tour
May 30 Dallas, Texas Dos Equis Pavilion
May 31 Rogers, Ark. Walmart AMP
June 1 St. Louis, Mo. Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
June 6 Detroit, Mich. Pine Knob Music Theatre
June 7 Cincinnati, Ohio Riverbend Music Center
June 8 Indianapolis, Ind. Ruoff Music Center
June 13 Gilford, N.H. BankNH Pavilion
June 14 Bangor, Maine Maine Savings Amphitheatre
June 15 Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Broadview Stage at SPAC
June 21 Boston, Mass.* Fenway Park
June 27 Bethel, N.Y. Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
June 28 Hershey, Pa. Hersheypark Stadium
June 29 Burgettstown, Pa. The Pavilion at Star Lake
July 10 Denver, Colo. Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre
July 11 Salt Lake City, Utah USANA Amphitheatre
July 13 Phoenix, Ariz. Footprint Center
July 16 Anaheim, Calif. Honda Center
July 17 Mountain View, Calif. Shoreline Amphitheatre
July 19 Portland, Ore. RV Inn Style Resorts Amphitheatre
July 20 Seattle, Wash. White River Amphitheatre
July 26 Birmingham, Ala. Oak Mountain Amphitheatre
July 27 Nashville, Tenn. Bridgestone Arena
Aug. 1 Hartford, Conn. The XFINITY Theatre
Aug. 2 Holmdel, N.J. PNC Bank Arts Center
Aug. 3 Columbia, Md. Merriweather Post Pavilion
Aug. 8 Somerset, Wisc. Somerset Amphitheater
Aug. 9 Chicago, Ill. Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre
Aug. 10 East Troy, Wisc. Alpine Valley Music Theatre
Aug. 15 Cleveland, Ohio Blossom Music Center
Aug. 16 Camden, N.J.. Freedom Mortgage Pavilion
Aug. 17 Bristow, Va. Jiffy Lube Live
Aug. 29 Columbia, S.C. Colonial Life Arena
Sept. 5 Wantagh, N.Y. Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater
Sept. 6 Syracuse, N.Y. Empower FCU Amphitheater at Lakeview
Sept. 7 Toronto, Ontario Budweiser Stage
Sept. 12 Knoxville, Tenn. Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center
Sept. 13 Raleigh, N.C. Coastal Credit Union Music Park
Sept. 14 Virginia Beach, Va. Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater
Sept. 19 Charlotte, N.C. PNC Music Pavilion
Sept. 20 Alpharetta, Ga. Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
Sept. 26 Tampa, Fla. MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
Sept. 27 Jacksonville, Fla. VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena
Sept. 28 West Palm Beach, Fla. iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre
* also featuring special guests Barenaked Ladies