19 minute read
Love And War
By Kevin Wildman Love And War have just released their sophomore album Edge Of The World. Love And War is a Melodic Hard Rock band based in Houston, Texas. Edge Of The World was recorded at Endeavor Studios in Arcadia Valley, Missouri by Greg Gill and the album was self-produced by the band along with the help of Greg Gill.
This incarnation of Love And War has been together since 2010. Guitarist John Adams and vocalist Jeff VandenBerghe, who had been performing together in other bands since 1982, formed the band in 2000. “Jeff and I have always clicked when writing together, so immediately we knew that the time was right to form a band and play again,” says guitarist John Adams. Drummer Donnie Bragg, another veteran of the Houston rock scene, joined the band in 2004. They felt that his huge “John Bonham style” drumming would really enhance the band and give them that hard-edged groove that they needed. Long-time friend, Ray Soliz joined up with them in 2010. The addition of Ray and his thunderous style of playing solidified the outfit. Since then, the band has never looked back and has just gotten tighter and tighter over the years. Since their formation, the band has made quite a name for themselves, and has opened for many national acts, such as Ratt, UFO, MSG, Y&T, Ace Frehley, Krokus, Night Ranger, and more. In 2012 the band released their first album, Up The Annie, which proved to be very successful for them, and helped them to gather a huge fan base regionally and nationally.
By the time 2017 rolled around, Love And War decided it was time to record another album, and writing on the new album Edge Of The World started into motion. It didn’t take long for the band to get basic ideas together and start working on the songs that would become the nucleus of Edge Of The World. When recording came into play, the band opted to journey to Endeavor Studios in Arcadia Valley, Missouri. This wasn’t some arbitrary decision. They felt the only person that could help them was producer/engineer Greg Gill. Greg had recorded the first Love And War album, Up The Annie at his studio in Houston, but had since relocated to Arcadia Valley, Missouri. Greg was also a guitarist and a long-time friend of the band, and another member of the Houston Rock scene as well. If anyone could perform the job they wanted, Greg could. He had done an excellent job of recording and engineering their first album. Over the next two to two and a half years, the band would travel back and forth to Greg’s Endeavor Studios to work on Edge Of The World. Normally an album like this wouldn’t take so long, but with Greg’s schedule the way it is, not to mention the band being located in Houston, the 11 and a half hour drive or two hour flight there slowed the process. Because of the band’s individual schedules, recording was done whenever they could schedule it in. One day there might be all of them there, on another it might just be two of them, and sometimes guitarist John Adams found
himself in the studio alone working on a endeavor for them to record the project at myriad of guitar parts. All in all, the session Endeavor Studios. But, like I said, the result went quite well and the end result is fantastic. was fantastic… 9 great rock songs with When you listen to Edge Of The World, you’ll inspiring lyrics and dynamite melodies that find it very melodic and appealing filled with will just melt your speakers. some of the most intense guitar parts and vocals that you’ve ever heard. Add to that the I had a chance to sit down and talk amazing rhythm section of Ray and Donnie, with guitarist John Adams and vocalist Jeff and you’ve got one of the finest Melodic VandenBerghe to get a little insight into the Hard Rock albums you’ve ever heard filled album and the songs which made for a great with 9 fantastic songs that will leave you interview as I’ve known these guys for many screaming for more. Believe me, when I years. heard the album, I couldn’t help but want to hear more of this great outfit. Let’s hope that KW: Tell me a little about the first it doesn’t take that long for them to start on song off the album, “We All Fall Down.” I another project. I want more! understand that you may want to do a video of this song at some time. On the recording process, the band went in and laid down their rhythm tracks John Adams: “We All Fall Down” is first live, along with scratch vocals and guitar the opening track. It’s a song that I wrote. parts. This way they could take their time For me it conveys kind of how we all have and perfect the guitars and vocals along the hard times in our lives. And you know for way. When we talk about multi-tracking, we me, I always thought it would be really cool really mean multi-tracking with some of these if we did a video on that. There would be songs. Some of them might have up to 80 homeless people or there would be like tracks filled with vocal overdubs, guitar something like a guy on top of the world that overdubs, and even tracks for various sound gets knocked down. A guy like a preacher, or effects that were needed on the album. Believe me, it was (pardon the pun) quite an continued on next page November 2020 • Rock and Blues International 67
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somebody that was on top of the world that Believin,” I understand that it’s an older song got busted. It’s something to that about how that you and Jeff started writing with a former we all have struggles in life. We all fall bassist that’s no longer with the band. down, you know, so that was that was what I conveyed when I was writing it. And then John Adams: . Well, that was a song basically Jeff just grabbed it and put his that actually me, Jeff, and a different bass emotion into it. player, David McElmurrey had wrote together. KW: What came first, the lyrics or the music. Jeff VandenBerghe: I sat down Indian style on that one and worked on the lyrics. John Adams: Typically for me it’s Sometimes John would call me all excited always the music. I’ll get a riff or something, and say, ‘Hey, I just had this idea’ and he’ll and then once I get a good feel about it, I’ll play me this recording he’s got on his phone. get into like a mood or a state of mind and it Of course, I can barely hear it. Then we will just kind of comes out. For that it was the get together and he’ll have an idea for the chorus first. A lot of times it’s the chorus first. music and we’ll go to the rehearsal room and I’ll just say, ‘keep playing it over and over’. Jeff VandenBerghe: The other one will I’ll sit Indian style and it’ll start coming to get to hear the hook and you go. Okay. Now I me. I’ll just start rattling off lyrics. I’ll come got to think of something to go with it. that’s up with a melody. I’ll just kind of scat a creates a story around the hook. melody and the words won’t make sense. I’ll just be humming a melody in my head and John Adams: That’s exactly right. So then the words will start coming and I just you find a chorus. You’ve got your hook. kind of create a story that way. You’ve got your title, and now let’s write it. Let’s write some lyrics around it and that’s John Adams: So the music was written pretty much how that one came about first and then we played it. He was listening and he would just scat down the lyrics. and KW: On the next song, “Start then he said, ‘I think I got it.’ 68 Rock and Blues International • November 2020 Jeff VandenBerghe e: It’s kind of about addiction, you know. (singing) “start believing before it starts all over again” and you know it’s in my head. It was sort of that, you know, just struggling with drugs and addiction and back in the days, when we were doing all that crap and how you needed to believe in yourself.
John Adams: I co-wrote it with a David McElmurrey and then Jeff came up with the lyrics and the vocal melody.
KW: On “Mercenary Man,” I understand that you wrote it with a hired gun in mind, a mercenary.
John Adams: Mercenary Man is a song that I wrote again. The weird thing about that is, I kind of had that mercenary man kind of lyric going on in my head and I didn’t know what to do with it. I thought it would always be cool about a hired gun, the kind of guy that if you’re pissed off at somebody or you wanted to get somebody assassinated you’d hire a merc. I had this riff and I was fooling around with the riff and I just kind of went, ‘I know that kind of fits,’ so then I just kind of built the song around that.
Jeff VandenBerghe: It was kind of an old school song.
John Adams: For me that song would be a song that I would have heard in high school. It has a total 70s vibe to me. For me when I was writing it, the groove reminded me of a UFO song. It doesn’t sound anything like a UFO song, but for me, because I’m such a big UFO fan, it reminded me of a Paul Chapman song like it was making moves off of The Wild, The Willing and the Innocent, which came out in 1981. What I wrote was completely different.
Jeff VandenBerghe: And that was one of those ones where he had the riff and the chorus part of it and he said, ‘help me come up with some of the lyrics for it’ and we did the lyrics. The lyrics are co-written by both of us. Yeah. He had the hook and then I just kind of added my little two cents to it.
KW: The title song off the album is “Edge Of The World” which I understand was one of the hardest songs on the album to record. How did that one evolve?
John Adams: “Edge Of The World was another song that I had written the music for and I had the groove. I remember giving it to Jeff. I sent it to him one time. He listened to it and said he didn’t have anything. He’s like, ‘I don’t know what to do with it.’ And so I came up with the whole thought of Edge Of The World. Jeff wrote the verses and I just wrote the choruses. But for me, it was standing on the edge of the world. And for me, that chorus is like standing on the precipice and looking down on your life and everything that you’ve done in your life, the reflecting. And at this point you feel like you’ve got nowhere to go because you’re
standing on the edge of the world and it’s either like fall off or get your shit together.
Jeff VandenBerghe: So that’s why it starts off being kind of negative. But it’s always a positive towards the end. I always write with a negative thing to it. I’ll try to turn it into a positive thing in the middle. By the end of the song, it’s something positive.
John Adams: I wrote the music of the chorus and then Jeff wrote all the verses.
KW: Up next is the song “Psycho Ride”. This was certainly an interesting song. Is that about anybody in particular.
Jeff VandenBerghe: That was all me baby. That kind of referred to some of the women I’ve had in my life, (singing) ‘get off this Psycho Ride, you know you love me, you hate me, you want me, you don’t love me anymore.’ It’s like get me off this fucking Psycho Ride. you know, and I had an idea for a riff for it.
John Adams: He was over at the house, and he hummed the riff to me.
Jeff VandenBerghe: And John took it from there.
John Adams: Yeah, he goes Eagles, you know it and then I was like, ‘okay do that again.’ And so I came up with a guitar part. Then he would say, okay and he already had the whole thing written. He had all the verses, the chorus.. he had the whole thing.
KW: So the lyrics came before the music for this one?
John: Yeah, we sat down on the bed at my house and I had my guitar and he hummed and he goes, ‘I got these lyrics’. I said, let’s do it and I swear the whole thing took about 15 minutes.
KW: How about “Final Destination”. How did that one come about. I saw the movie… off to Jeff Wong, the guy that did that series. Unfortunately he said he’ll never do another Final Destination. At this point since the CDs out, I still want to send him the song and say ‘hey if you ever want to, we have this song for the soundtrack that you can run wrote the lyrics in one practice.
during the credits. This will kick out there. Come on do another Final Destination… do the final finalist.
John Adams: So what happened with that is, I had the music written. We came out here with the band and we worked out the music and Jeff did what he normally did. He sits over here Indian style, with his legs crossed with his tablet and he literally wrote everything in one practice.
Jeff VandenBerghe: I’ll just say ‘keep you now?
playing it over and over again’.
KW: So what’s the theme of “Final and being the kind of things that my dad at all. That’s the first opening lyrics. That’s paddle your own canoe… shit like that.
Destination”?
John Adams: It’s about a fight. It’s about ‘don’t get in my face’. Yeah, if you do, it’s going to be your final destination.
Jeff VandenBerghe: Yeah, it’s like, you think you’re fucking tough, you know. Okay, but you know it’s step up or shut up,.
John Adams: The first line is ‘I’ve had enough of your back talk, dude. If I was you, yeah, you want to step up because I’ve been looking, it seems to be you. So basically it’s about standing tough. John Adams: Yeah, so we came in here and we rocked it out. This is a Love And War song, but it’s different for us because it’s more like a swampy thing.
Jeff VandenBerghe: It’s Southern Rock, but it shows the versatility that we can do pretty much anything we put our minds to.
John Adams: So I wrote the music and I pretty much had the whole thing written like typically when we come in here. I didn’t have any lyrics or any ideas to share with Jeff at all. I’ll have all the music written and so we went through the whole thing. And he sat over there again like he normally does and
KW: So what’s this song all about to
Jeff VandenBerghe: It’s about my dad taught me when I was a kid. Once a job is first begun, you never leave it till it’s done. Be the labor great or small, do it well or not the stuff my dad taught me when I was a kid, you know, just I guess, values, the conservative values. Love many, trust few. Learn to looking for some trouble and the more I keep
Those were things that he heard when he was a kid and he taught them to me and it just stuck.
KW: That throws the title of the song off a bit. How did that happen?
KW: What are we talking about in John Adams: I came up with that and “Strange Kind Of Medicine”? for me, I just wanted to kind of write something around that. The reason that I John Adams: That’s another one I had came up with it was because the intro of the all the music for. That was one that I had song was all swampy and I was thinking already written and I had that intro idea something about maybe some kind of coming up. It was a song I was going to do moonshine thing, or something like that. That with Dead Man’s Hand because it was real was that was kind of a strange kind of swampy and I thought it was more Southern medicine, but Jeff turned it around and the rock. strange kind of medicine is basically the things you are taught through life growing up. Jeff VandenBerghe: But then he played that for me and I went. ‘Oh hell no, we got to continued on next page do that man.’ I’m all over that. November 2020 • Rock and Blues International 69
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Jeff VandenBerghe: Yeah, love God and you know and it’s a strange kind of medicine, you know, but if you stayed true to your morals and your convictions, it’s medicine for the soul. The medicine for the things that you’ve learned growing up. It’s medicine for the soul.
John Adams: So that’s the strange kind of medicine, but it works if you know it. It is strange when you think about it, a lot of people don’t hold on to that kind of mentality or whatever. Things that we grew up with in our past. Kids don’t grow up that way now, but we have because we’re from a whole other generation. I mean kids right now don’t know what the hell’s going on. Their parents grew up in the 80s and 90s. It’s a different world today. These kids today are from a different generation. They protest in the streets and they don’t even know what they’re doing or why they’re doing it.
KW: How about “Sideways Flight” now. What does that mean? time. That was another one of those situations where we worked out the music and Jeff wrote the words for it.
Jeff VandenBerghe: I actually wrote the words to that when I was working on a house. I was painting a house down in Galveston with a crew of guys and I’d go down there every weekend and it was just one of those songs. When I was painting it just kind of came to me and I just took off and said ‘I’ll be right back’ and I was writing down the words. I got the idea of the name of the song from a friend of mine, Craig Wasserman in El Paso. He said something about like, ‘I’m fucking flying like I’m on a sideward flight. I’m falling like I’m in a sideward flight, crashing and burning. I said, that’s a good name for a song and I was like, whoa, and it always stuck in my head and then I that’s what I was kind of thinking… of a plane. We’re gonna crash and burn.
John Adams: It’s kind of a metaphor for your life.
Jeff VandenBerghe: Now that was the Jeff VandenBerghe: Yeah, I gotta pull song that I wrote way back in the day and we up now before it’s too late sort of. We were used to do it with another band I had called really kind of reckless back in those days. A Lestat. lot of my lyrics are about that kind of shit. It came from that, you know? Yeah. It was great John Adams: Yeah that was a song we to be young then. used to do back in the 90s with our band Lestat. I wrote the music to it. I always had KW: The last song on the album is that riff and it was reminded me of Dimebag called “Southside Johnny.” Are you singing Darrell. At the beginning there, I had that riff about Southside Johnny and the Asbury and then we worked it out of practice one Jukes? What is this song about? 70 Rock and Blues International • November 2020 Jeff VandenBerghe: That’s another one where I sat down Indian style and wrote all the lyrics. It was about a pimp.
John Adams: It’s about a pimp. He’s got his bitches and he rides around in a limousine and you know, nobody messes with Southside Johnny. He’s kind of like the king of the world kind of guy… the king of the neighborhood.
Jeff VandenBerghe: Yeah, he sports a gold tooth. He’s got a .45.
John Adams: I kind of had that guitar riff going through my head for a long time. I wrote the music and I had everything down except there was a bridge on that song that I was having trouble with, and David Macklemore who was with us at the time goes, well try this way. Well, he wrote the bridge. (singing) ‘Well, if you’re looking for love and you need a honey, talk to Johnny, give him some money. He’ll do what he can to make you feel like a man. If the price is right, you can be in heaven’. Yeah, it’s about a pimp.
For the guys in Love And War, this was definitely a labor of love. To this day they really don’t know how many hours they worked on this project. Laying down the rhythm parts came fairly easy, but when it came to the vocals and guitar parts, those were recorded and re-recorded, overdubbed, thought out again and in some case reworked to fit the new mood of the song. John Adams tells us that for this record, he wanted it to be their masterpiece. Well, I think he and the band accomplished that. Now how are they going to top this? This album really brought Love And War to the top of their game. When it came to the final mixing and mastering of this project, members of the band were literally in tears. They just couldn’t believe that they had made this incredible album. It came out even better than they expected. For some of them it was really an emotional moment. For John Adams especially. He had spent so much time on his guitar parts and they came out unbelievably fantastic. You could see the tears dripping down his cheeks.
So now what’s left for the band. The Covid Pandemic slowed things down a bit for the band, so now it’s time to get the message out about Edge Of The World. It’s time to get this fine album out to the people. Being an independent project, the main slowdown is distribution. Because of the shutdown, CD Baby’s warehouse was somewhat in limbo, so it was becoming quite a chore to get the new product out. They’re still managing to do it though as the world starts opening up. When you get the chance, you really need to check out Love and War and their new album, Edge Of The World. Edge Of The World is available on all major streaming service, ReverbNation, FaceBook, and on Love-andwar.com.
