Sunshine of His Love

www.LovinLife.com BY CHRISTINA FUOCO-KARASINSKI For Kofi Baker, playing the music of Cream is bittersweet.

His father, Ginger Baker, was the backbeat of Cream before dying October 6, 2019.

“When he passed away, I was in England with The Music of Cream,” he says. “It’s a different thing for me now. I feel like it’s my responsibility to keep this music going.”

Formed in London in 1966, Cream featured bassist Jack Bruce, guitarist Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger. It’s considered one of the world’s first supergroups. The Music of Cream began in 2017 with a handful of concerts celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Cream in Australia and New Zealand. For 2020 and beyond, The Music of Cream will hit the road with a new show and lineup. Honoring the original band’s landmark 1967 recording of “Disraeli Gears,” often considered Cream’s crowning achievement, concerts will feature the album performed in its entirety, followed by Clapton classics including hits like “Cocaine,” “Layla” “Crossroads” and “Wonderful Tonight” along with other Cream hits and rarities.

The Music of Cream is Baker on drums and Will Johns (Clapton’s nephew and son of Zeppelin/Stones engineer Andy) on guitar and vocals. They’re paired with musicians Sean McNabb and Chris Shutters.

Baker’s mission is to expose younger fans to Cream’s music. He argues that today’s music “really sucks.”

“That period (of Cream) was the best,” he says. “The musicians really knew how to play. I want to bring this musicianship and good songs back to the music business.

“The thing is, today, when you go see your band, there’s a big show with all of these dancers and the music is just crap. You didn’t have to have all the stimulation. It’s all the same, too.”

Baker says the Cream song “Blue Condition” is the most challenging on the tour. “I have to sing the melody and play it,” he says. “The most challenging part is making the jams musical, the improv parts really musical, and (making) them go somewhere.

“Everything else is really comfortable.

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21MARCH 2020 | I’ve been a drummer most of my life.”

Baker grew up playing original jazz and fusion music. He served as Steve Marriott’s drummer in Humble Pie, and fronted his own band, Kofi Baker’s Psychedelic Trip. Playing Cream’s music, however, is comfortable.

“My dad pretty much played it the way he felt it,” he says. “It’s like playing my family’s music. It feels very nice, especially because my dad’s dead now. It feels great keeping my legacy going. It’s a good feeling all around for me.”

What isn’t a good feeling is the drama Baker has endured since his father died.

“He never really talked to me once he married his fourth wife,” he says of Kudzai Machokoto. “She kept my dad away from us all. She was a very bad influence. She told my dad we all hated them. When I went to him in hospital before he died, I found out it was his wife. He was nice to me.”

He bequeathed his drums to his son, but Machokoto, he says, has refused to hand them over.

“She won’t give me the drums,” he says. “I want to send them to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They don’t pay you for it. I want to get his drums there. She even said to me in hospital, ‘Dad wants you to have the kit.’ Now she’s saying the opposite. It’s really sad that these people come into these people’s lives at the end and take over. That’s a hardship to deal with.” Ginger was known for his fiery temper. When Baker spoke to his dad in the hospital, he was surprised at his temperament. “I was blown away that my dad wasn’t the person I thought he was the last 10 years,” he says.

“When my dad’s fourth wife did all that stuff, she wanted to have everything. She emailed my sister and said, ‘You’re out of the will.’ She’s not very smart to put it in writing. She’s not a very smart person. My sister really wants to fight it, but it’s not about the money. She’s so nasty.” MORE INFO What: The Music of Cream: Performing “Disraeli Gears” and Clapton Classics When: 7 p.m. Sunday, March 15 Where: Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress Cost: $27-$69 Info: 547-3040, foxtucson.com The Music of Cream is Kofi Baker on drums and Will Johns (Eric Clapton’s nephew and son of Zeppelin/Stones engineer Andy) on guitar and vocals. They’re paired with musicians Sean McNabb and Chris Shutters. (Photo courtesy SRO)

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22 | MARCH 2020 www.LovinLife.com This second version of the group had a good run, releasing four more albums before running out of juice after the 2015 album “Rock & Roll.”

“We just weren’t collectively united. It wasn’t a real band or gang anymore,” he says. “Changes needed to happen in order for it to carry on. It’s been a long time. It’s hard to keep five guys focused on one thing for 20 years, and that’s what people don’t understand. And this is the only occupation where when you do hire somebody or you start playing with somebody, you have to actually live with them, too, on a daily basis. So, it becomes interesting and there’s a lot of stuff. But at the end of the day, I just want everybody to be happy if they’re in Buckcherry or not in Buckcherry.”

Once again, Todd took a musical detour before refocusing on Buckcherry. He formed a new side group, Josh Todd & the Conflict, and released a debut album, “Year of the Tiger,” in fall 2017.

It was shortly after Todd’s album was released that Buckcherry parted ways with drummer Muriel and, perhaps more significantly, guitarist Nelson—considering he was an original band member and Todd’s main songwriting collaborator. Todd took the latest transition for Buckcherry in stride, tapping guitarist Kevin Roentgen and drummer Francis Ruiz as replacements, sounding like the lineup change was little more than a bump in the road.

“It wasn’t like a whole lineup change,” Todd notes. “It was two guys, and that’s (more than) 2 years old now.

“We moved on and we’re feeling great as a band again. We made a great record (“Warpaint”). It was fun making records again. It was a lot of growth, and with growth comes pain and breakthroughs and all that kind of stuff,” Todd says. “It’s funny because the songwriting for ‘Warpaint’ and all the things that happened are so reminiscent of the exact same kind of transition we went through prior to making the record ‘15.’ We’d already been through this kind of stuff, so it was actually refreshing and great.”

What also gave Todd reason for optimism going into the “Warpaint” project is he had already found his new songwriting partner in Buckcherry guitarist Stevie D. The two wrote the songs for the Josh Todd & the Conflict album and found they had a good chemistry.

“We went through the whole record-making process together. That was kind of like us learning our songwriting language, and we had a lot of fun doing that,” Todd says. “So, by the time we got to the songwriting of ‘Warpaint,’ it just wasn’t a real difficult thing. We already had a lot of songwriting under our belts, and we knew we had to overcome a lot of obstacles. The lineup change, it’s been a long time since the last Buckcherry record. We knew we had to make the record, the Buckcherry record, that was going to be ‘the one.’ And I feel this is the best Buckcherry record since ‘15.’”

Fans may well agree. The song “Warpaint” kicks things off with raw guitar riffs and a catchy chorus that takes the song to another level. Subsequent songs like “Right Now,” “Bent” and “No Regrets” carry forward the gritty, hooky and high-intensity sound. Meanwhile, a couple of fine songs—the poppy, mid-tempo “Radio Song” and the country-inflected ballad “The Hunger”—add welcome variety to the “Warpaint” album, and the icing on the cake is a cover of the Nine Inch Nails hit “Head Like a Hole,” which sticks to the original’s arrangement, only with a more stripped back, hard-hitting rock sound.

The new songs should translate well to the live stage. The only problem is with the deep catalog of Buckcherry songs, Todd won’t be able to play as may “Warpaint” songs as he ideally would like.

“It’s really hard (writing a set list) because this is our eighth record. There are so many songs that we haven’t even played live ever in our whole career,” Todd says. “You’ve always got to play the usual suspects like ‘Sorry,’ ‘Crazy Bitch’ and ‘Lit Up’ and those types of songs. And now, this new record, it’s just so good I want to play all of the songs.”

That isn’t happening. But even before the album’s release, the advance singles “Head Like a Hole” and “Warpaint,” as well as “Bent,” were already in the set, and since then a couple of additional new songs figure to get regular play.

“‘Bent’ is like really great live,” Todd says. “We just started throwing in ‘Back Down’ live, and I can’t wait to do ‘Radio Song.’” Buckcherry...continued from page 20

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