Chuck Ragan

The author of a great song is not just someone who writes good music, it’s also someone who lives by the words they sing. The reason why Chuck Ragan is such a great musician may be accredited to the fact that he feels he has no other choice than to write; he lives by the pen, and delivers great songs. Chuck met up with thepunksite to discuss the future of the Revival tour, his crazy touring schedule, and what’s in the works for Chuck Ragan and Hot Water Music.

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Amy: It’s been about two years since the last Chuck Ragan album came out, what have you been doing in the meantime?

Chuck: We’ve been touring quite a bit; touring, writing, and recording non-stop. It’s not really that much different than what we’ve been doing for the past couple years. I think this record that we just finished recording, we’re calling it Covering Ground, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. It just seems that we’ve been non-stop with either the Revival Tour, support tours, my own tours; we’re just truckin’.

Amy: How far along are you with the record, is it done?

Chuck: Yeah, we’re kind of in the final stages of it now. We did all of our parts and there’s nothing more for us to do in terms of John Gaunt, myself, and Joe Ginsberg. We laid our stuff down, and we’re having a few friends sing on it whenever they can. Brian Fallon of Gaslight Anthem, Audra Mae came into the studio, and then we had some different friends; Chris Phillips from the Squirrel Nut Zippers did all the percussion, and Christopher Thorn from Blind Melon produced it and played on it as well, which is just amazing. It’s been coming together, we’re in the final stages of mixing, and we’ll start getting some songs out there soon

Amy: Is it going to come out this year?

Chuck: Oh, absolutely. We’re looking at an early fall release.

Amy: How come there are no North America dates for the Revival Tour this year?

Chuck: In all honestly, we had planned to do it, we were working on it, and it was about to happen. Originally, it was going to happen in the fall of 2010 and we had a lot of hang-ups and had to push it to January and February. We had even more hang-ups and pushed it to spring of 2011, and finally my wife and I threw our hands up. We believe in the tour so much, and if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right. It was really hard because I was constantly out on the road and we had some folks we were working with that we’re going to help us, and long story short, they just weren’t the right people, so unfortunately we had to push the tour to next year. We’re already working on next year, we’re planning on bringing it to the US in spring of 2012, and I can guarantee it will be worth the wait.

Amy: How did you get involved in this tour with Social Distortion?

Chuck: They reached out to us; they’ve got a great team and a great manager, Shane Trulin; he’s been into Hot Water Music and this stuff. It was good timing and its pretty cool to have the opportunity, we’re just extremely blessed. We did a run with them in January and February and it went over really well, hit it off with them, and they asked us back to do main support.

Amy: How has the crowd been taking to Chuck Ragan at such large venues?

Chuck: The response has been absolutely incredible. What we noticed on that first tour is a massive percent of the audience is our age or older, mid-to-late 30’s and older. I think that they can connect to this kind of music a lot easier than an extremely young crowd; Social D has some great fans. Social D has always written legitimate rock songs. They write great music, and I feel like their fan base is pretty open-minded all around. We couldn’t ask for a better response, and I think a lot of the folks don’t expect what we’re doing on a show like this. They’re getting ready for Social D to come up and blow the roof off the joint, and I don’t think they really expect an upright bass, fiddle, and an acoustic guitar in the opening act. It’s a little different, and stands apart from if we were an electric rock band.

Amy: As soon as this tour is done at the end of the month, you’re starting the Hot Water Music dates immediately following?

Chuck: Yeah, straight into it.

Amy: Why is Hot Water Music only doing a three date stint?

Chuck: I have no idea. We were asked to do Krazy Fest, then some people reached out and asked us to play Milwaukee and Detroit, and we decided to make a weekend out of it.

Amy: Is it hard to switch gears and jump right into that?

Chuck: We play so much that we don’t even really rehearse and it works out just fine. We’d probably be a lot better than we are if we actually had rehearsal times; but we come together, and just put the pedal down. We do it so often that it’s just like riding a bike for us when we get together.

Amy: So you have a new Chuck Ragan album due out in the fall, in the meantime you have the three Hot Water Music dates, then you’re playing Fest, is anything going on with Hot Water Music or are you keeping focused on the solo material?

Chuck: The solo stuff and the Revival Tour have been my main focus since 2005 or so, and I’m keeping it the main focus. Hot Water, I’d love to do it, we all want to do a new record. We’ve actually been writing, but it’s slow going. Everyone is so busy in their own way and we’ll get to it. That’s kind of the coolest part to me is there’s no pressure there; it’s nice that when it happens, it’s going to be right.

Amy: I read in a press release that you have no other choice than to make music, and I thought that was an interesting description of your career. How would you explain that, what do you think they meant by that?

Chuck: What I mean by that is a lot of people have asked me why I write or what’s the most important thing to me about it? For me, song writing, writing lyrics, keeping journals, it’s always been more of a therapy than anything else. What I mean by that is I do want to do it, I have a passion for it, but I feel it’s something that I more so need to do rather than want to do; if that makes sense. That’s what they meant by that, I feel like I have to do it. Song writing has always been something where if I’ve got something boiling or need to get something off my chest, I somehow got into that outlet years ago where writing a song or writing it out on a piece of paper basically liberated that and freed me up to move on with my life. I feel like every time I get it off my chest and get it out, I can take another step forward.

Amy: What would you say inspires your music, obviously there’s a lot going on all the time.

Chuck: Anything and everything that affects me in a positive or negative way from the moment I wake up to the moment I lay down, there’s so much. Mostly nowadays, it’s been all my wife, family, close friends, the artists and friends we travel and play with, and home life.

Amy: When you’re not out on the road, are you pretty much working on music all the time?

Chuck: I’m always writing, always, always writing. I love that, it feels good, and sometimes from a business aspect of it, from what I hear, it’s almost too much, which can be frustrating at times because if I had it my way, I’d put stuff out whenever it’s done. There’s definitely no shortage of material; I feel like I’ve written more in the past five or six years than I have in a decade.

Amy: Would you say it’s frustrating that you have so much you want to get out there, but you can’t?

Chuck: it is, and I understand it, especially from a business or record label standpoint. They want to have this one record, focus on that record, and not put anything else out. For me, that’s ten songs and I understand it, but it’s tough to do when you have 40 other ones laying around that are either finished, unfinished, or almost there; it’s one of those things but it’s one day at a time. I stack them up and record them, and sometimes they’ll lie around for a long time, sometimes well go back and dig it up and focus on it.

Amy: So say I was here to see Social Distortion tonight and have never heard of Chuck Ragan, but am familiar with Hot Water Music, what reason would you say to go check out some Chuck Ragan material, or vice versa? Say I saw this band tonight and never heard of Hot Water, what do you think would draw me to check them out?

Chuck: I mean Hot Water Music is just simply a full throttle rock-and-roll band, high energy, extremely loud, and just pedal down. If people like that kind of music, yeah maybe they should check it out

Amy: They’re just so different; I wonder how the two intertwine.

Chuck: When I first started doing a lot of the solo stuff, a majority of the people were there because of Hot Water Music. The past three or four years, it’s flip-flopped and the majority of the people at our shows have come and had no idea what Hot Water Music was or what we’ve ever done. The music stylistically is totally different, more stripped down, simple songs, but to me, ethically it’s the same. Writing the lyrics I write for this stuff isn’t any different than how I felt writing lyrics for Hot Water Music in that aspect its right in the same line.

Amy: Anything you’d like to add?

Chuck: I’m real excited about this new record we have coming out and am anxious to get those songs out and bring the Revival Tour back soon. Follow us online, either Twitter or Facebook or chuckraganmusic.com, that will always have the most current news on this crazy life.