SULLY ERNA On New Solo Album: 'I Love That I Didn't Have To Get Handcuffed To One Genre Of Music'

Meltdown of the WRIF radio station in Detroit, Michigan recently conducted an interview with GODSMACK frontman Sully Erna. You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On his new solo album, “Hometown Life”:

Sully: “As people knew that, or learned that [my first solo album, 2010’s] ‘Avalon’ was quite the departure from what I do in GODSMACK, this is pretty much another departure from what I did with ‘Avalon’. This one’s a lot… It’s not as earthy and tribal as ‘Avalon’ was; it’s a little bit cleaner production — kind of…. if I was to describe it, maybe more of a masculine Adele style. But there’s a lot of different genres on here too; there’s little hits of country or blues and jazz or contemporary, like some rock vibes at times. There’s just a little bit of everything, and I love that about this record. I love that I didn’t have to get handcuffed to one genre of music.”

On the differences between writing for GODSMACK and his solo project:

Sully: “I just write. I constantly write. If I’m home, I’m either writing on an acoustic or on my piano, and I can immediately identify if this melody or this riff or this kind of arrangement is gonna be better for GODSMACK or just better for my own thing on the side. So I separate them instantly and I make little folders and just kind of revisit them when it’s either time to write for GODSMACK or write for the solo stuff.”

On what his daughter thinks of his new album:

Sully: “I played her some stuff when I was putting it together and starting to mix some of the rough forms of it, and and she likes it a lot; she thought it was cool. She liked ‘Your Own Drum’ and she liked ‘Different Kind Of Tears’ a lot. And it’s funny, because those songs are kind of inspired by her and her age group in general — just hoping that they’ll be leaders and not followers and let ’em run to the beat of their own drum and things like that. So it was interesting that those are the ones that kind of singled out. But she likes my music. She’s certainly into a lot of different styles of music, and she’s got a very wide variety of stuff she listens to for as young as she is. So, yeah, she has great taste in music, but she listens to everything. As you see them grow, and as a parent, you’re looking at their life through the eyes of a child. And there’s just things that are really interesting, and they’re getting to that stage now as teenagers where they’re very challenging years; she’s starting high school and you can easily go down the right path of the wrong path. So it’s been a very interesting couple of years for me so far watching this whole teenage age develop.”

“Hometown Life” was released on September 30 via BMG. The effort offers a wide-ranging glimpse of Erna‘s eclectic musical tastes — from the singer-songwriter Billy Joel/Bruce Springsteen narratives of the title track and the bossa nova touch of “Take All of Me” to the breezy island feel of “Your Own Drum”, the finger-snapping Motown bass lines of the bluesy “Turn It Up”, the country flavors of “Different Kind Of Tears” and the wide-screen canvas of mini-symphonies “Blue Skies” and “Forever My Infinity”.

For “Hometown Life”, Sully worked with the same musicians from “Avalon” with the exception of percussionist Niall Gregory. On two of the songs — “Different Kind Of Tears” and “Your Own Drum” — Sully collaborated with Nashville-based tunesmith Zac Malloy, who has also written for Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw, Jake Owen, SKILLET and Daughtry.