J: Alright so I’m here with Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge. Hello Myles!

MK: Hello!

J: So how’s it going?

MK: It’s good, things are good, I’m enjoying my time at home working hard. It’s been very busy.

J: That’s cool. Alright now, I just kinda woke up, so I’m going to ask a random series of words, and you’re going to respond with the first thing that comes to mind, is that cool?

MK: (Laughs) That’s great.

J: I’m just gonna read off these words.

MK: Alright.

J: Laundry.

MK: Tide.

J: Poker.

MK: Chips.

J: Wax.

MK: Uhhh… Ecstatic.

J: (Laughs) Polyurethane.

MK: Base.

J: Cat.

MK: Eat, eat!

J: Onomatopoeia

MK: Onomatopoeia?

J: Yeah.

MK: (Laughs) What is that?

J: (Laughs) Exactly ok… I think we’re good.

MK: Alright.

J: So now that we’ve got that out of the way, tell us what a day in the life of Myles Kennedy consists of, when you’re at home just chilling.

MK: Umm let’s see here. I’m just in the middle of recording a bunch of stuff which involves getting up at about nine and then I usually work till about three, and then I go exercise for a bit just to clear my head. Come back, work till about seven, eat, then work some more till about two, then start all over and do it again in the morning.

J: Do you have any hobbies?

K: You know I really need to get a hobby. That was one of my new year’s resolutions - something outside of music, because I’ve spent my whole life just basically obsessed with my hobby, which has been music but, now that’s what I do for a living, fortunately, so I guess I should find something outside of that to make life more interesting. Any suggestions?

J: Ummm… no. Not really.. Golfing? I don’t know. (Laughs)

MK: That’s our drummer.

J: Flip plays golf?

MK: Yeah he’s good. He’s really good. He tried to teach me. Actually any time I try to pick up a new hobby I’m so bad at it that generally I resign immediately and try to stick to something I kinda know which is the only thing I really do know actually, good ole music.

J: Watch Over You just cracked the Billboard Top 20, so how do you feel about that?

MK: Very good. It’s exciting. Especially considering it’s a rock format which, to be honest, I never thought it would see the light of day in any sort of active rock media. It was geared more towards a different kind of radio station so we’re happy that those folks have embraced it, it’s really cool.

J: Earlier this week Ted Cohen opened the Digital Music Forum East stating that, “Music 1.0 is dead.” What is your opinion on that? You know the record labels are dinosaurs now, and CD’s and all that…

MK: That would be the 1.0 version right there?

J: Yeah, I mean, how are artists going to find new ways to sell music?

MK: Obviously the internet is now, it is God, essentially, and it’s great and exciting but it’s tricky because there’s so much content out there. The trick for any artist is to direct traffic to his music. It’s easier for established artists to do that; it’s the young artists I’m concerned about. It’s going to take very creative people to forge ahead. We definitely are in 2.0 right now, it’s an exciting time, but in the same breath it’s kind of scary cause everything’s up in the air. The keyword is there is so much content out there and to actually break through and have something that sticks out, that’s the trick.

J: There’s all these things coming out now to promote music though, you’ve got Guitar Hero and Rock Band and all this stuff, have you ever though about putting Alter Bridge out on something like that?

MK: Yeah that’d be great actually! We did something years ago for Madden 2004. Open Your Eyes was on there and it really helped a lot. I think that Guitar Hero fits this band perfectly as guitar heavy as this band tends to be, so hopefully we’ll do something with them in the future, and we’ll keep you guys posted.

J: Awesome. There’s a lot of discussion about Alter Bridge’s political orientation through songs like One by One. With the ’08 election coming up, how do you feel about politics right now?

MK: That’s such a tricky subject for us because we’ve always tried to stay out of it. Obviously with songs - people interpret them many different ways. That’s certainly not a political song. I guess the best way to put it is just to remember the people out there who are overseas, and regardless of how you feel about the war there are young people over there dying. We were hoping to bring attention to that. As far as 2008 and the political landscape, in my lifetime I’ve never seen so many people excited about what’s coming up. I think that’s good, our country needs that. It’s a beautiful thing.

J: Alright now that we’ve got all the difficult questions out of the way, I wanna ask you about your tattoos. Not the octopus.

MK: (Laughs)

J: What’s the story behind the Koi and the Dragon tattoo?

MK: The Dragon was the first one I ever got. I got that one 8, 9 years ago, I think? I was going through a real strange point in my life. It was during the period I was working on the second Mayfield Four album, Second Skin - just a real tumultuous time. I heard this a Japanese legend about the Yellow River. The theory is that if the Koi fish could swim up all the waterfalls it would turn into a dragon. The whole legend was symbolic of strength and perseverance. That really stuck with me, so I have the Dragon on one arm and the Koi on the other. Maybe one day I’ll actually do a back piece with that whole legend showing how the Koi gradually manifests into the Dragon, but that’s where the tattoos were inspired.

J: Have you ever though about growing a beard?

MK: I couldn’t if my life depended on it. I have the strangest facial hair. If I go two weeks without shaving it just looks like these little weird long hairs stick out of my face. I definitely wouldn’t have a Burt Reynolds beard. (laughs)

J: I thought you’d look kinda like Zakk Wylde if you had the long ZZ Top thing going on.

MK: I wish I could. (laughs)

J: So you played trumpet back in high school?

MK: Correct.

J: Is there any chance we could hear a little trumpet on future albums?

MK: (laughs) I’ve got it. I haven’t played in almost 20 years, it’s been a long time. It was actually a good thing. My mom was the one who pushed me into playing the trumpet in the fifth grade and I actually didn’t want to play anything at that point in my life. I guess I was a little athlete when I was younger, but thank goodness she did because a few years later when I got bit by the music bug and I started playing the guitar I was able to pick up it up pretty quickly. They say starting with other instruments when you’re young makes the transition easier. So thank you Mom!

J: (Laughs) I play trombone so…

MK: You do? You’re a band geek like me?

J: Yeah, but it’s harder for me because trombone’s in bass cleft and guitar is in treble cleft so I guess I have to play piano to learn the transition.

MK: Right, I actually played the trombone in my junior year for a semester but it was the valve trombone so I didn’t have to do the slide thing because I would have never figured that out. I do remember in marching band being knocked in the back of the head by a trombone player which didn’t feel too good. (laughs)

J: (laughs) I do that all the time. On a serious note, Alter Bridge has always had a live feel to their albums, but have you ever wanted to do a big huge song with all the choirs and the strings and the whole nine yards?

MK: That’s a good question. I don’t know if that would work with Alter Bridge. It might get too over the top. Some of our songs are pretty epic and some of our arrangements are pretty grand as it is, and I think the thing you have to be careful with when arranging a song is that you don’t overdo it. There’s a fine line between cool and cheesy, so for the time being we’ll probably hold off on that. But you never know there could be a song that comes along that would lend itself to that, so if we do maybe we could call you up and you can play trombone (laughs)

J: And you’ll play trumpet and it’ll be good.

MK: Right!

J: So you just got off tour, how was that?

MK: It was awesome! It was a fantastic tour. I think it breathed new life into the band. The energy level was high the entire month and I think we needed it and we’re grateful for it.

J: When are you going back out?

MK: We do a few one-offs in April and I think they’re going to start building some things toward the end of April and May so it’s going to be a little while. Probably another month to six weeks or something like that.

J: So what have you got going on in the downtime?

MK: A lot of writing, myself. I’ve just been staying extremely busy putting material together and demo-ing things. I don’t know if some of it or any of it will make it into Alter Bridge, it’s just kind of all I know how to do. I guess I’m your textbook definition of a workaholic. I don’t like downtime and I really enjoy creating.

J: Have you shot a video to Watch Over You yet?

MK: No we haven’t, but we’re hoping to real soon. We’ve got some things cooking there and we can’t wait to share it. If we can shoot a video it’s going to be really cool so we’re excited about that.

J: Is there anything in the works for a summer US tour?

MK: That needs to happen!

J: It does!

MK: Hopefully yeah. We’ll keep our fingers crossed!

J: So what sort of music do you listen to?

MK: I’m pretty schizophrenic. I always have been. There’s so many great forms of music and to limit yourself to just one or two it feels like you’re cheating yourself. I like everything from Rachmaninoff to Son House and all the delta blues stuff. I love Miles Davis kind of blues - probably one of favourite records of all time. It’s a masterpiece. I love Lamb of God; there are just so many great artists out there, so just whatever is cool.

J: Do you ever miss the sort of music you played back in the Citizen Swing days?

MK: It was fun. It was definitely an experimental time and a growth period for me as a writer. The very first Citizen Swing records were technically the first songs I ever really wrote. Lyrically, at that period I had someone else that I was collaborating with, so I didn’t start into the lyrics till the second Citizen Swing record. That one I don’t think you can even find. It was basically a demo and I think we only printed like 500 copies of that. But that’s when as a writer I started to kind of figure out where I was going. It wasn’t until the Mayfield period until I had a clue. (Laughs) I consider Citizen Swing an education and learning how to write. Before that I was strictly a guitar player and doing session work. It was just a totally different mindset…improvisation and jazz. If that makes sense?

J: Yeah, you’ve always got to make a transition to where you’ll end up eventually. You have some unreleased material that’s circulating on the internet, namely a Mayfield Four song called Mercy Rub. Does that bother you at all?

MK: I think it’s great. I don’t know how it got out there… There are actually a few Mayfield songs that never made it on to any records just lying around. There’s a demo that we recorded in about 32 hours and we’d only been a band for about six months and I think a few of those are floating around as well. As long as people are aware that they were just demos and we were really trying to find ourselves as a band. It’s the same thing with when people record a show and I’m sick. You can’t put your best foot forward every time now with the internet. It’s basically if you record something or if you play a show and somebody records something it can get on the internet in no time at all. So you’re always kind of under the microscope right now thanks to the old information superhighway.

J: There’s also some unreleased Alter Bridge b-sides that are stored in your vaults. Is there any chance of them being released in the future?

MK: We’ve talked about it. I think that could happen in the coming years. There’s plenty of stuff out there, so we just have to decide what we’re going to do with it all.

J: You always do a lot of covers as tribute to the Rock Gods and Led Zeppelin of course who are above the Rock Gods.

MK: You’re right there are none higher. (Laughs)

J: Are you going to continue to do that?

MK: We talked about that on the last tour. We’ve got two records now to tour on. It’s kind of changed the set a little bit. On the last record when we were touring with One Day Remains we obviously had to integrate a few covers to give people their money’s worth. We had people complaining, “you aren’t playing this song or you aren’t playing that song”, so we kind of started thinking we’re playing an AC/DC song instead of say, Coming Home or something that people want to hear that we’ve created. So we’re kind of leaning to sticking to our own stuff for the time being and maybe we’ll add that element of surprise and maybe add a cover in here and there. Obviously Traveling Riverside Blues is a cover, but its short enough that doesn’t take up a ton of time from the set, so we’ll just play it by ear.

J: Cool. I’ve got one last question for you.

MK: Alright!

J: What if anything can you tell us about the next batch of material?

MK: Really not much at this point. Mark’s been writing, I’ve been writing. It’s just going to be a matter of weeding it all out. There’s so many ideas floating around. The trick is to get in the room with Flip and Brian and see what they react to. There are different tiers to how we do this whole thing. What we try to do is come up with as much content as possible and take it to your bros and see what sticks to the wall, so to speak. After that you see what sticks to the wall with people outside the band. We’ve just got to figure out what we want to achieve with the next record. I’ll say this- it’s going to be a challenge; we’re so happy with how Blackbird turned out. We don’t want to put out anything under that level if possible. We’ve kind of raised the bar to a level that we hope we can at least match.