Progressive rocker Joe Bailey joins Preston Frazier for a detailed look inside his latest album, ‘Splinters’:
PRESTON FRAZIER: Your last album, Devil in the White City, was breathtaking, driving. It was very musical. When I heard about Splinters, I was immediately intrigued. How did you conceive of the album?
JOE BAILEY: I was writing the music for Splinters probably as I was releasing Devil in the White City.” That tends to be the way, I tend to get the itch during the releasing stages. It always happens. So I’m always writing, throughout the year, and got the itch just after Devil was released.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Devil in the White City had a specific theme that followed a famous serial killer, and it was from beginning to end. Does Splinters have a theme?
JOE BAILEY: No, however, there is some sort of like linking themes lyrically, I suppose, but there’s no actual concept to it. I think the lyrics are quite personal.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Has your writing changed since your earlier albums?
JOE BAILEY: Probably not, actually. In terms of the production side of things, a lot’s changed. I’m quicker at arranging tracks, and I’m quicker at realizing whether I’m going on too long. I think the earlier stuff, there was so much music there that was just kind of going on and I didn’t know when to stop. Whereas, now I can kind of be a bit brutal with myself and remove stuff that is going on a bit too long. My writing is a bit more disciplined, but my actual approach to writing is very much the same as it was back then. I’d write all my music and then the lyrics follow. “The End Comes Too Late” was the concept album as well. But if you listen to that album and listen to the new album, you hear the progress. I’ve done a lot of work on the mixing and production side of things. So the change between the two is just drastic.
PRESTON FRAZIER: You play almost every instrument on your album, it seems to me your guitar parts are pretty intricate and your bass parts are wonderful, but your keyboard parts, especially in the last two albums have been so detailed and orchestral. Has your playing changed since your debut album?
JOE BAILEY: I would definitely say so. I’ve improved ’cause I’ve been playing for such a long time now. Keyboard-wise, I’ve never been a great keyboard player. Yet I’ve always been able to play around to get the sounds I want. I will program all the orchestration, everything. if there’s a line that I can hear I will just play it on the keyboard. But normally it’s all written down on a piano roll or on Guitar Pro or something like that. Recently I’ve been suffering with rheumatoid arthritis, so the joints in my fingers are starting to really affect my playing. I have tried to simplify things to make them easier for me. On this new album, Splinters, I did a lot of guitar solos that were quite melodic and I enjoy playing. I think it’s easier for me to play lead lines than it is to do intricate chords and things like that.
PRESTON FRAZIER: You play with Mark Anthony K in the Dark Monarchy. One of the things I love about your musical collaboration is, your bass playing is stellar. The keyboard parts also stepped up to another level as well. It’s just hard to believe that you’ve simplified it ’cause it sounds so full.
JOE BAILEY: Well, the whole orchestration and everything, I love that big massive, orchestra sound. So that will never disappear from my writing. That will always be complex and very in your face. But in terms of my actual physical playing on the guitar and the bass, sometimes I have to tone it down, depending on how, how I’m feeling. Splinters turned out brilliantly. I’m so happy with the way it ended, the way the guitars and the bass sound on that.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Splinters has nine tracks on it. It’s a fantastic combination of sounds. Your vocals are stellar as always. Let’s start with the first track, which is “Full Frontal Eulogy.” Tell me a little bit about that song, how it came about lyrically and some of the instrumentation.
JOE BAILEY: I’ll start with the instrumentation ‘cause that came first when I was writing. it’s quite an epic tune. I think it’s about eight and a half, nine minutes. That introduction was originally supposed to be played as a clean guitar line, and then I was flicking through various effects and I accidentally put it into a distorted sound. As soon as I heard it was like, oh, well, I’ve gotta keep it like that now. So it changed the whole dynamic of the song as well. And then, later on, there’s so many time signature changes in this. I think it’s seven-eight, and a lot of nine-eight. Weirdly, it’s not really a time signature. I use a lot, but, I went a bit mental on this and all those brass sections as well. Lyrically how the general, how people generally can’t really think for themselves anymore. And that things like social media are just throwing things at you and telling you how to think and tell you what to believe.
PRESTON FRAZIER: You have the section where you have those stacked vocal harmonies, which was fantastic. The song “Matricide” is probably my favorite on the album. What about that one?
JOE BAILEY: “Matricide,” I think, was probably one of the very first ones I wrote for this album. It’s a Joe Bailey-sounding song. It’s got everything you would expect from me. it’s quite heavy. The whole album’s quite heavy in comparison to previous work, I know “Devil in the White City” was ridiculously heavy for me. The lyrics to “Matricide” are about how we’re destroying the planet. I’ve written about this before with the Dark Monarchy, so it’s not new territory for me, but I wanted to write a song about how we’re not doing enough collectively as a population and how I fear that it could be too late.
PRESTON FRAZIER: It’s pretty direct lyrically. If you go on to the band camp when you’re buying the album, you could, you could see the lyrics. your vocals are also pretty clean, so you can hear what you’re saying. This song is a wonderful synthesizer intro. There are two different-sounding guitar solos. You have melodic and clean. You have a little dirtier solo, I think towards the end.
JOE BAILEY: Yeah, I did the first solo and then the second solo I thought I need to do something totally different to make it stand out. And then I just tapped, I just tapped a load of things,that was what you hear was what I came up with. It was like, oh, that’s great. I love it when that happens.
PRESTON FRAZIER: What gear did you use for the album?
JOE BAILEY: I’m using the guitar I’ve used since the debut, actually. It’s a Shechter C one classic left-handed. It’s got Mother of Pearl inlay on the fretboard. It’s a beautiful guitar. I’ve never had any reason to use anything else ’cause it’s perfect for for all my needs. I go direct in [to my computer] and then I use plugins. I don’t use any amps or anything.
on Splinters, I was used Easy Mix, easy Mix two. I used mostly presets. I’m using a Music Man six-string bass I got from China. it’s the same bass that John Myoung uses from Dream Theater, but he uses the five-string version.
PRESTON FRAZIER: The song “I, Myself and Me” is fascinating. It also shows a change in your vocal approach for that song.
JOE BAILEY: It’s, well, it’s a very, very fast song. Almost like dance, sort of like dance music. I wrote this song a long time ago. It must’ve been about 11 or 12 years ago. And I always liked the verses and the choruses in the original song. So I always wanted to come back to it. There’s quite a lot of old songs that I’ve written that I will revisit, I think. ’cause there’s just too much stuff that I’ve written that I haven’t used that is too good not to use. This was one of them. In fact, I’ve done it a few times on this album. I’ve just brought the lyrics up to date a bit, ’cause the lyrics that I wrote originally were a bit rubbish. I bought it up to date with how I am now, but I kept the sort of dancey feel, but I made it more appropriate to now. Lyrically it’s about social awkwardness, just being awkward in general around other people. That’s what the whole song’s about.
PRESTON FRAZIER: The next song on my list is “The Long Haul.”
JOE BAILEY: It’s an epic, about 11 minutes. I wrote that original intro guitar part, the verses and the chorus melodies and riffs a while ago. I was looking through my folders marked 2007 and I was thinking, this is great. I need to use this. So I wrote, I finished it, I used the verses and the choruses, and then I rewrote all of the instrumental sections. Originally, the song was clocking in it about six and a half, seven minutes. And then I revisited it about two, three weeks ago, and I added all that ridiculous instrumental section in the middle. I added another three minutes onto it. I had a lot of fun making that instrumental section.
PRESTON FRAZIER: It shows. It’s very musical. It’s very adventurous. It’s very aggressive. It works really well. The next song I have on my list is “Time is Killing Me,” which is a little bit more than seven minutes.
JOE BAILEY: Yes, it’s a bit heavier as well. I think the whole album is quite heavy. I’m going in that direction now. I’ve always thought of myself as just a prog-rock outfit. More and more people are telling me that I’m a straight-up prog-metal. There’s no two ways about it. I’m happy to accept that. I do like my heavy music. “Time Is Killing me” has a very strange section in the middle where it goes into, 9/8 as well. That section that I wrote a long time ago. I’ve always wanted to use that little bit. So I stuck that in the middle. The rest of it was a new song. I wrote this all on, on the guitar. ’cause normally I would write things on the keyboard or I would write it on the computer. I wrote this whole song on the guitar, which was unusual for me. Seems to be an approach I’m taking more and more these days. It’s a completely different, approach writing on the guitar than it is to writing on the keyboard. I think it’s just about how life is too short. you regret the time that you wished away. That’s pretty much what that song’s about.
PRESTON FRAZIER: The song, “Salt in Our Wound” is pretty amazing against synth work as well.
JOE BAILEY: That was the last song I wrote for the album, actually. It was changed a lot as well, because I had the song finished then I was just, was not happy with the bridge or the chorus. I rewrote the entire bridge and chorus. I rewrote the instrumental section as well. So a lot of it changed. And I also rewrote the lyrics as well. that’s just me moaning about us was getting shafted by the government at all times. “No Man’s Land,” the last song on the album, was a really old song that I wrote again around that 2007 era. I wrote that on the guitar, just by moving one shape up and down the neck. That was the intro. I did rewrite the lyrics and changed the pianos a bit on it. That was so last minute, the album had eight tracks for months and months and months. And then I just slipped that in, to make it nine tracks at the end. It’s a lovely way to end the album as well.
PRESTON FRAZIER: “Slug” is a little unusual.
JOE BAILEY: Yes, just because it’s so ridiculous. I had an idea about a year ago to write a song, from the perspective of an insect that was that, ’cause I was going through my notes and that was one of the notes. I was trying to think of an insect that would be funny or, you know, engaging enough to write about, and I couldn’t think of any really. And then I thought, what if I try something different? And then I thought, slug! I did extensive research on how slugs live so, everything in this song is pretty accurate in terms of how a slug lives and breeds. even down to the, the effect I put on the voice. I thought, you know, how how would a slug sound if it could speak? That’s what I wrote. The vocal approach of that was really unusual. I’m so happy with those lyrics. I some of the finest lyrics I’ve ever written. it was a pleasure to get my sister Charlotte to put the trumpets down for that section as well.
“I Am The Enemy” is also a shift. that song was completely electronic. I didn’t play any instruments on that song. I wrote that on my computer and I was like, what should I do? It was just all synthesizers and then I added the drums later on. But even the bass is all programmed as well. I want, I wanted to just see if I could write an electronic song without any instrumentation. it’s kind of different from the rest of the album, but it kind of fits in nicely and breaks it up a bit. That’s why I put “Slug” on.
PRESTON FRAZIER: What’s next up for you?
JOE BAILEY: I’m working on the fourth Dark Monarchy album with Mark Anthony K.
The album should be out and around June/July time. I have already started writing for the next album, but it’s, it’s early days yet nothing that I am overly keen on, but I’m sure some of it I’ll use, I’ll be writing throughout most of the year until I’ve got a good solid lineup. Sometimes I’ll write between 15 and 20 songs and then I have to narrow them down to eight or something like that. I mean, I can’t go on forever and I’d be making double discs otherwise! The CD version of Splinters will also be available at some point. The guy who does my artwork, Steve Holland, he did the cover for this, but at the moment, he’s incredibly busy with two other projects. So he hasn’t been able to do any of the layout for the booklet, so I’m gonna have a go at it.
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