SCOTTI HILL: SKID ROW Is 'Looking Forward' To Reteaming With Producer NICK RASKULINECZ On Next Studio Album
December 29, 2023In a recent interview with Larry Mac of the 96.1 KLPX radio station, SKID ROW guitarist Scotti Hill was asked if he and his bandmates have begun work on material for the follow-up to last year's "The Gang's All Here" album. The LP marked SKID ROW's recording debut with Swedish singer Erik Grönwall, who joined the group in January 2022 as the replacement for ZP Theart.
Scotti said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Yeah, we definitely plan on going back in. Our producer Nick Raskulinecz, who did 'The Gang's All Here', he's on board and he's excited about it, and we're all looking forward to it."
He continued: "I don't know when we'll be going into the studio, but we certainly will. We're always working on ideas and riffs and whatever you would call it, especially at soundcheck — a lot of our stuff is written at soundcheck. One of us will just bust out, start playing a riff, and if it grabs everybody's ears, somebody will pull their iPhone out of their pocket and record it and then it'll go into a file and then we'll assemble it all later. But a lot of songs have been born at soundcheck."
"The Gang's All Here" arrived in October 2022 via earMUSIC. The group recorded most of the LP in Nashville, Tennessee with Raskulinecz, who has previously worked with FOO FIGHTERS, STONE SOUR, HALESTORM, EVANESCENCE, RUSH and ALICE IN CHAINS, among many others.
Last month, SKID ROW guitarist Dave "Snake" Sabo spoke to Tulsa Music Stream about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's next LP. "We've written a few things, getting Erik involved as well," Snake said. "We've toured quite a bit, so that takes up… We're not really adept at writing on the road; we're pretty crappy at it, actually. One thing that we do do is we come up with soundcheck riffs and we utilize those riffs. And when we have, when we go, 'Okay. Let's start writing for the next record,' we'll stop touring for a while and really get down to it and start getting in a room and shutting the door and shutting the phones off and cranking them out."
Sabo continued: "We're still old school, man. It's, like, we record these riffs on the dictaphone. And then I can remember we had built this studio at my house in New Jersey years ago, this big-ass studio. And Rachel [Bolan, SKID ROW bassist] and I would be in the live room and we'd come up with an idea. And instead of hitting the tape machine or something like that, we both just lie instinctively pulled out our dictaphones. And we looked at each other, like, 'What? We just spent this crazy amount of money building this studio, and we're still [using a] dictaphone.' The iPhone is our dictaphone now. So it's actually really cool to sit there and be able to get in a room after you're done touring and stuff like that, and go back and listen to these riffs. And you look at the date and you're, like, 'Oh my God. All right. That was soundcheck in Seattle,' or 'That was soundcheck in Boise.' There's something that attaches itself to that, and that helps to spur the creative process. It kind of reminds me, or it reminds you, as a writer, of where you were at that particular moment when this came to you, and then potentially what it could be. It's an exciting process."
Three months ago, SKID ROW postponed the third North American leg of "The Gang's All Here" tour with BUCKCHERRY until early next year. Erik later explained that he needed "more time to recover" from a recent illness due to the fact that he received a bone marrow transplant after being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia more than two and a half years ago.
SKID ROW's fourth leg of "The Gang's All Here" tour with BUCKCHERRY took place earlier this month.
Theart, who had been in the group for more than six years, played his final gig with SKID ROW in February 2022 before being officially given the boot.
Comments Disclaimer And Information