Blues
Traveler's thirteen-year career includes founding the H.O.R.D.E.
festival, having one of the longest
charting singles ever
("Run-Around"), winning a Grammy, selling over ten million albums, and
surviving a founding
member's death. The seasoned band's latest studio
release, Truth Be Told, finds them forging ahead with their
signature song-oriented, blues-jam rock. Truth Be Told
sounds like vintage Blues Traveler, complete with fiery
harmonica,
powerful solos, and vocalist John Popper's self-revelatory lyrics.
After eight albums, the sessions
for Truth Be Told
marked drummer Brendan Hill's first experience ever recording with a
click track. "Don Gehman,
our producer, was pretty adamant about using
a click," Hill laughs, noting that beyond his initial hesitation, using
the click
made the studio process much simpler. "Aside from that, we
did much less pre-production on this record. We worked on writing
songs
in the studio, rather than knowing exactly what we were going to do
before we went in. We'd play a track and
listen back to it, and if we
liked it we'd move on to the next piece. That way it didn't feel like
we were playing
something we'd worked on forever. We captured a lot of spontaneous creative energy that way."
Hill
is proud of his performance on Truth Be Told,
but admits the album isn't necessarily the best forum for showing
off
his chops. "A Blues Traveler live show is where you'll see us jumping
through hoops," he says. Check out the
band's brand-new concert DVD, Thinnest Of Air, for a taste of Hill's stage
chops.