By Jim Barber
As a way to commemorate the musical influences that helped shape their own sound, which lead to the creation of a powerhouse debut album, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the issuance of that record, Mechanical Resonance, American rockers Tesla are releasing a special new album entitled Homage, July 17 via Frontiers Music Srl.
Running for 14 tracks, the album, which also features a brand new original tune, ‘Never Alone,’ has a particular focus on songs featuring amazing vocal prowess, running the gamut of genres, styles and eras.
From the silky soulfulness of Sam Cooke and The Temptations, to the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, the melodic stylings of mid-1970s Supertramp, to the bombastic theatricality of Queen’s Freddie Mercury, and even a tip of the cowboy hat to legendary country crooner Hank Williams Sr., Homage sees Tesla frontman Jeff Keith using his potently emotive instrument – his own voice – surrounded by the savvy musical interpretations of his bandmates to stunningly evocative effect. The result is an album that reminds folks of Tesla’s indomitability as a vibrant and still engaging rock and roll band, as well as a fitting show of respect for some of the best American and British popular music of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
“We’ve always liked doing covers. We’re a band that likes to do covers. We played a lot of cover songs when we first started, like most bands. And the covers that we’ve recorded worked out well for us,” Keith told Music Life Magazine in a recent phone interview, citing the examples of ‘Little Suzi’ from Mechanical Resonance, and also most famously, ‘Signs’ from their 1990 live acoustic album Five Man Acoustical Jam.
Originally recorded and released by a New Wave pop band called Ph.D. from the U.K. in 1981, where they called it ‘Little Suzi’s On The Up,’ Tesla’s version was video and radio hit, becoming the most successful single from their debut album. ‘Signs’ was originally written and recorded by Canadian group Five Man Electrical Band, with the 1971 single release making it to #8 on the Billboard charts. Tesla’s version also made the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and climbed as high as #2 on the Mainstream Rock Chart.
“The idea for this album, I think started with [band bassist and co-founder] Brian Wheat who said, ‘hey Jeffrey, you can still sing. You’ve still got your voice, and we’re still going strong, maybe we should do a record and call it Homage, paying homage to some of what we feel are the greatest singers and greatest songs that we grew up on.’ So we did, and we had fun with it, so much fun that we even wrote an original song of our own called ‘Never Alone,’” Keith said, as he talked about the band’s early days and how they absorbed a lot of different music in those embryonic stages of their career.
“Brian and Frankie Hannon [who co-founded City Kidd, later called Tesla, with Wheat in 1981] grew up in South Sacramento, California. I grew up in northern California, about an hour and a half out of Sacramento. I also lived six years back in Oklahoma, graduated high school in 1976, and came back to California by 1983, and that’s when I joined the band and next year we figured we had the lineup we wanted and wanted to try to get a record deal. So we went down to L.A. and showcased a bit. Nothing really happened, so we came back to Sacramento and went back to the drawing board, kept playing and eventually got signed [to Geffen Records] in 1985. But they said, ‘you’re not ready to make a record yet,’ which was true. We still needed to work on our songwriting, and we did. So by the end of 1986 our first record came out, Mechanical Resonance.
“And we brought all of the different influences we had into the band, so it took us a while to develop our own sound. And those are the songs and artists that we continue to like and some of them are the ones we paid homage to on this new record. I think a lot of it came from the music that our parents or our older siblings listened to, but they’re all great songs that we grew up on that we feel are great songs to record ourselves. We’re really happy with how it turned out, and we’re hoping that you and everybody else will be too.”
In terms of choosing the songs to record for Homage, obviously the pool of possibilities was pretty deep and wide at the beginning of the process, but Keith said he and his bandmates were able to whittle it down to something a little more manageable.
“We wanted to show all of our influences. A lot of people think that because we’re in a rock band, all we ever listen to is rock music. But it’s not true: we listen to a lot of soul music, some country, some pop, and a lot of old school music – the stuff we grew up on. I think Homage represents a broad range of music and genres that we listened to growing up, and in our early days, and that we still listen to today. It kind of shows how broad we are in all of our influences. There are a lot more songs that we could have put on there, but we had to narrow it down and I think we narrowed it down to a good representation of those influences. And when you make a record, you’re always thinking of songs you can play live. We’d love to play any of these songs live and I’m sure we’ll be doing that throughout the next few years, throwing one or two songs from the record here and there into the set and see how people take it. I know we’re going to be having fun playing them,” he said, before discussing some of the specific songs, including a powerfully emotive version of the Lynyrd Skynyrd classic, ‘The Ballad of Curtis Loew.’
“I remember Brian saying to me, ‘Jeffrey, what Lynyrd Skynyrd song would you want to do?’ Because we all love Skynyrd. And there’s always the usual songs that people typically cover like ‘Freebird,’ ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ and ‘Simple Man.’ I said, ‘you know what? One of my all time favourite Lynyrd Skynyrd songs was ‘The Ballad of Curtis Loew.’ So we tried it and recorded it and ended up loving how it came out. But then when we were down in Texas recording ‘I Love You’ by the Climax Blues Band, Frank asked us if we’d be interested in recording ‘Give A Little Bit’ by Supertramp. So we recorded it and it also came out great. So we thought, ‘Hey man, why not throw that on the record too?’ Supertramp was a favourite of ours from back in the 1970s, and it’s another part of that broad range of songs that represent what we all cut our teeth on.”
Another one of the highlights of Homage is Tesla’s version of ‘Spread Your Wings’ a cult classic song by Queen from their 1977 News of the World album, and one of the few songs from the Queen hits catalogue penned by bassist John Deacon.
“When we’d be sound checking and we’d be checking the keyboards for the song ‘Paradise’ [a hit single from 1988 The Great Radio Controversy album] we’d just start playing ‘Spread Your Wings, and I would start singing it. And for years we said we should record that song, but always said, ‘yeah, sometime.’ And you know what, we finally did. When we decided we were going to do this record, we thought’ hey, let’s do that Queen song, ‘Spread Your Wings.’ We think it also came out great,” Keith said, adding that they deliberately chose to include a new original tune as a bit of a reminder that the band still had their songwriting chops, as well as the desire and creative spark to keep writing new songs.
“Whenever you put out a record, you always want to try to write at least one original song to show that we still like writing songs. We just thought, let’s write an original song and throw it on there. It gives people something new from Tesla. We think it’s a good song, and that it actually fits pretty well with all the other songs on the record, and hopefully other people will think that too. In terms of a whole new album of original songs, it does take a little time to commit to writing a record. There’s the writing, pre-production and recording it all, but we’re hoping to get the time in our schedule to do something like that. We would love to write an all original new record, but like I said, we’re going to need some time to do that, Again, it’s important to do that because it shows everyone that we still love writing music and still love coming together and making the effort in putting new songs together. We could just play off our old back catalogue or whatever they call it – be a legacy act, and we’d probably be okay for a while.
The lineup of Keith, Hannon, Wheat, drummer Troy Lucketta and second guitarist Tommy Skeoch, both of whom joined in 1984, went from strength to strength after Mechanical Resonance, releasing the critically acclaimed album The Great Radio Controversy in 1989, followed by the aforementioned live acoustic album a year later, and their third studio album, Psychotic Supper just a year after that, in 1991.
The seismic shift in the music business that occurred with the advent of the Seattle ‘grunge’ scene of the early 1990s blunted many a band’s momentum. That coupled with some internal issues meant Tesla went on hiatus shortly after releasing the Bust A Nut album in 1994, getting back together in 2000. Skeoch left in 2006, and was replaced by guitarist Dave Rude, while Lucketta lasted until 2021 when he left and was replaced by Steve Brown. Both he and Rude continue with the band to this day. Homage is Tesla’s eighth album release of the 21st century coming, as stated above, 40 years after that of Mechanical Resonance.
So, understanding first hand how difficult sustainability, relevance and longevity are in any industry, let alone the fickle music industry, what is Keith’s explanation for Tesla’s staying power over the last four decades?
“When we think about it, it’s like, ‘what? 40 years!’ And that’s because you never know what to expect when you make your first record. You don’t know if it’s even going to work, if anyone’s going to like it, and listen to it, or play it, right out of the gate. But things have always seemed to work out well for us. We kind of went against the grain a little bit, but always managed to fit in and keep going. And through all the grunge and all that kind of stuff, and the changes to the industry and streaming and labels and stuff, we always stuck together and stuck to our roots. That’s one of the main reasons we’re still here – we stayed true to ourselves. We never tried to be something that we weren’t. So, yeah, we stuck to our roots and we’re still sticking to our roots and having fun and putting out stuff that we’re having fun recording,” Keith said.
“I know that it is crazy to think about, being around for 40 years, and like I said, still going strong, still out there doing it. We’re going out on tour with Motley Crue later this year and looking forward to that and just having fun, fun, fun out there. Part of it too is that we were always told to write songs from the heart. That way, when you get up on stage and you play them, you’re singing and playing from the heart. Over the years people have picked up on that about us. I think that’s one of the big things that has given us the longevity that we have, that we’re still going to play from the heart, sing from the heart, write songs from the heart. We believe that’s what you should do, and that’s what we’ve done and that’s what’s worked well for us.
“But we like writing songs. Actually, we love writing songs. We had the time and opportunity while putting together this new record to write one, so we did. For us, it’s still really fun to write a song, so hopefully we’ll have enough time to put a whole record of new songs together sometime. And we still love to play, and play for our fans – our old fans and new fans. The most intoxicating thing in the world is getting up on a stage and playing a concert together with your friends in a band. It’s the most intoxicating thing that I’ve ever known. We still have fun. It’s never boring. And that’s the whole secret too behind our longevity. You’ve got to have fun, and write songs from the heart, and play songs from the heart and if you do that, people are going to enjoy it too. We’re playing songs that we wrote 40 years ago and people are still loving it, and so are we.”
For more information on Tesla, visit the band’s social media accounts, or https://teslatheband.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
