Lookin’ For Trouble is the latest album from The Dead Daisies, an incredible collection of blues covers and a happy accident that emerged during writing sessions for the band’s latest album of originals, Light ‘Em Up. As they soaked up the history and heritage of their surroundings at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, this was translated this into a series spontaneous jams and resulted in Daisy-versions of legendary tracks from artists such as BB King, Robert Johnson, Rufus Thomas and many others. To get the full story, we catch up with guitarist Doug Aldrich at his home in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles where we hang out in his music room. Originally a pool-house-turned-game room, Doug was very clear where it’s destiny lay and the transformation took place, providing a hive of creativity for the last 25 years. As we noodle on our guitars our conversation begins...

Well let’s start with the music because what The Dead Daisies has created with the latest album Lookin’ For Trouble is absolutely outstanding. But I love the story about how it all came together. You were busy recording Light ‘Em Up at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and I think it’s fair to say that this iconic space just created a huge wave of inspiration for the band. Can I ask you just to paint a picture of what it felt like to be in that environment and how what started as a late night jam session ended up being this incredible record.

First of all, it was us just all by chance. It’s like as John Corabi has said in some interviews, it was a happy accident. We didn’t plan it but it turned out to be a fun thing that we did. And then down the road, a year later, they decided to release it. It was cut live and there’s mistakes. Basically what you’re hearing is exactly what we were doing at the moment. We didn’t go back and fix anything up. It’s raw in a good way. To answer the first part of your question, I live in Los Angeles and you go to places like, you know, Las Vegas or Nashville or New York and they’re all kind of similar. It’s a city and it’s busy. But when you go to Muscle Shoals in Alabama, it’s in what we call ‘the sticks’, you know? It’s like a small town. When you think ‘Hey, let’s go on vacation‘ you probably don’t say right away ‘Let’s go to Muscle Shoals’ unless you live in the area or something. But we go there, it’s a small town and everything looks different. The people are different – the people are absolutely amazing - super kind like in any small town and they’re just really great. So we’re driving to the studio and we know the history, we’ve seen the documentary of Fame Studios, but you walk in and you can’t help but be transformed to 1970 or 1960 or whatever. It was like walking into a time chamber and you’re immediately like ‘Whoah!‘. Everything you look at is like vintage and has this vibe about it, a nostalgic thing, and then you’re thinking of course of who’s worked there and some of the music that they’ve done there. But little by little as you spend more time there you realise it goes way, way deeper. So it was inspirational from the get-go. Every hour that we spent there was just like precious time. It was cool! What an amazing feeling it was to work in that environment! The reason we picked that place was because we wanted to go to a place that had a lot of history and we wanted to go to someplace different that we hadn’t been to before. Actually we didn’t record Light ‘Em Up there. We were just writing and we wanted to go someplace to write because that’s what The Dead Daisies do – we write together. We picked that studio because when you go somewhere different it gives you this new inspiration. It’s fresh. It’s a fresh start. If you go to the same place every day, the same studio, you can be creative - of course you can - but you’ve got to tap into it. It was immediately inspirational to go into a new place like that.

Many people will attest to the fact that rock music came from the blues and I know that for lots of guitarists when starting out, blues music can often be a focus, a 12 bar blues jam in E minor being a wonderful way of learning the pentatonic scale for example. But tell me about where your love of the blues came from and how it shaped you as a guitarist.

My love the blues came secondhand. Of course I’d heard some blues music when I was younger and you always hear these progressions, and yes, the first thing that you do once you learn guitar is learn the typical blues 1-4-5 progression. It’s fun to jam on and we still jam like that. Somebody came over the other day and we were looking at guitars together and then we both started playing and that’s it. But my inspiration came from guys like Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Hendrix and Tony Iommi. These were the guys that were on the radio – and The Allman Brothers and Eagles, and of course Albert Collins. So it was second generation because those guys listened to the real guys. Let’s look at Jimmy Page: Jimmy Page was a blizzard and was a music aficionado. He loved the blues and he loved skiffle, but he and Robert Plant tapped into that Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters thing, and so did The Rolling Stones. I think when this record was recorded we weren’t really planning on it being released but I think it made sense in a couple of ways. First of all it sounded cool. If I spent a couple of days I would probably play it differently, you know? And also what’s there is real - it was recorded on the spot, hot off the press before I had a chance to change it up. I think what made sense to management was that this is actually something totally different. It doesn’t sound like Led Zeppelin. It sounds like The Dead Daisies doing blues and trying to pay tribute to the ‘second hand guys’- and I say that respectfully - and the real guys. After it was all said and done, it made sense. Let’s pay tribute to the originals and that’s what we decided to do.

Lookin’ For Trouble has some incredible tracks on there from the likes of the 3 kings (Albert, Freddie and BB), Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Howlin’ Wolf, Lead Belly and Rufus Thomas - all absolute legends. With so many incredible tracks to choose from how did the band collectively come together to decide what tracks would be right for this album?

It was just by chance. We just thought of songs. There’s a million songs that you think of now, like ‘Oh, man, since it’s an album we should have done this or should have done that!’, you know? But we picked the songs that we thought about off the top of our head. It started off with Crossroads or I’m Ready. We just wanted to have fun, jam on it and we recorded it. Well, we went through it for about half an hour or whatever and then we came up with our parts that we were comfortable with and it felt good. Marti Frederikson the producer said “Well, I’m rolling, guys, let’s put it down”, and you’re in the opportunity where you go ‘Hey, we might need this at some point for like a B-side or whatever’. So we did it and it turned out really cool. Marti invited us to come in and listen and it was like ‘Whoah, that’s great!’. At that point we were done for the day so we came back the next day and like I said, the intention was for us to go there and to write but we got so inspired and the stars aligned that we got ahead of the game in terms of our schedule with our songwriting so we had more free time. That’s when somebody would go “Well, what do you want to play?” and I’d say “How about Going Down?”. I love the Jeff Beck version and it’s not far out of our wheelhouse. It’s one of those songs that people jam on all the time in a club. So we did it. Another thing that is key is that the studio didn’t have Marshall amps or Blackstar or the big amps. They had a bunch of small amps. They had a Gibson amp that had only a 10 inch speaker that you just turned to 10. It only had 1 or 2 knobs and it just sounded fantastic! There was also a small Fender there and some of the stuff that made our sound very tight and gave an authenticity to the songs when we started playing them. Every day we’d think about another song to do, like The Thrill Is Gone. We’d try it and think about what we were going to do to it. There was no reason to do it the same way and we were inspired by the fact that there are so many great versions of the songs that are famous, like Crossroads. Cream made that version probably the most famous one for me, but then we’d go back and listen to different versions to really question as a band what we would do to it. That’s what was really cool about Aerosmith and their record Honkin’ On Bobo, they just made those songs kind of their own. So with Crossroads we took a slide part that I had and made that into a 1-4-5 progression, kind of like Zeppelin. And then the same thing, using Zeppelin as my inspiration, I also wanted to pay tribute to BB King with The Thrill Is Gone but I wanted to do something different. And that’s when our drummer for the session, Sarah Tomek, said “Why don’t we try it in a 6-8 groove?”. So instead of it being in a 4–4 groove we put it into a 6–8 feel which kind of slowed it down and gave it a sadder, melancholy vibe which is really cool. So we just put our stamp on all of them. Michael Devin is a crazy intelligent guy and he’s got a serious history of the blues so he probably suggested a few things, and John Corabi the same thing. John suggested Black Betty but he was very clear that he didn’t want to do the Ram Jam version. So I was plucking around and started coming up with almost a Billy Gibbons type of feel or a Superstition kind of feel. But I was thinking of Billy Gibbons and that kind of Texas vibe and Sarah said “Oh yeah, a Texas groove, it’s going to be more like this…” So she was a big part of it too. We were in between drummers because Brian Tichy had gone off to do the Gene Simmons Band and Tommy Clufetus hadn’t started back with us yet. So Marti goes “Hey, I got this girl and she is sick!”. I’d seen her play with Steven Tyler before and she’s great. Marti said “I use her all the time, she can play anything and she’ll be great for writing. She also knows blues and knows her grooves. What do you want? Chicago blues? Okay. Texas blues? Cool”. It was like that. David Lowy wanted to do one of my favourites, Little Red Rooster. That’s one of my favourites on the album. It’s just got a cool vibe to it, you know?

Absolutely! And it’s a great way to close the record. And for this record you’ve mentioned how the band have again worked with Marti Frederiksen. That guy just has the absolute Midas touch. How did he shape the sound and direction of Lookin’ For Trouble, especially given the unique way in which it was recorded?

We just went with what we had and he was excited to go there too because there was like a tie-in with Fame Studios and his studio in Nashville. But we worked with what we had and he was excited, and we had these little amps that sounded so cool and different. Yes, Marti does have the Midas touch so when it came to us doing Crossroads he was very clear that we needed another part and he came up with the different chords for this extra section. He’s an amazing songwriter and super challenging and he’s been doing this his whole life. He’s studied and he’s got a degree in music as well but he’s a real rock ‘n’ roll guy and he likes to catch the vibe in the studio. So one of his Midas touch things is that he gets the vibe just right. And he will call you out: “Dude, why are you rushing, you need to relax bro!” and I’ll say “Well because I’m a guitar player and that’s what we do“ and he’ll say “Well don’t! It doesn’t sound right. Lay it back”. He knows how to push your buttons. A producer will sometimes push your buttons by saying “Who can we get to come in and play on this album?” and the reply will be “ I don’t want anybody to come and play in this album, I want to do it!” and he will say “Well fucking do it, man! Come on! Play it! Let’s go!” (Laughs!) It’s like that – producers inspire you to work harder and be more than you are, you know? That’s the Midas touch.

It’s wonderful to hear how it all unfolded, that you cut the songs live, in the same room where so many legends have recorded, and the results are absolutely outstanding. That’s not always how The Dead Daisies make a record. Do you think the band will explore this further for future records?

Yeah, for moving forward and writing songs I can definitely see us transitioning a little bit in a blues direction on several songs. Of course, the sound of the Daisies is a simple straight ahead rock ‘n’ roll. Over the years we started to come up with this name, it’s like ‘pub rock’. It’s simple working men’s stuff and blues is that, so I can definitely see us moving in this direction for some original songs.

Let’s talk about The Dead Daisies in a live setting. You’ve recently completed a 10 date tour of Europe and it’s been fantastic to see the reviews that have emerged from those incredible shows. You even had Brent Fitz joining the band on drums for this run. What did it mean to have Brent on this tour?

He is also like Michael Devin. He’s got a high IQ and can do a lot of things. Just a quick point about Michael, he played some amazing harp on the record and he did it all in like one day. And Brent Fitz is the same way. He can play all these different instruments. Of course, he’s a world-renowned drummer and keyboard player – those are probably his first call - but he’s got a great voice, he’s a great songwriter and he also plays bass. It was awesome to get him working with us on that tour. Obviously, now as you will have seen, Tommy Clufetus was playing with Ozzy so he was preparing for that Ozzy show – rest in peace, Ozzy. He didn’t even tell us the details, only that something had come up. But he found Brent and he was ready to go and of course Brent and John have history so it just made sense. Brent crushed it and he’s such a lovely cat, you know? He’s a really good dude to travel with. Usually on the road we hang together and we have dinner together every night. We’re not like some bands who may actually split up off the stage, go their own way and who won’t see each other until the next day or whatever, but we do hang out and we’ll have a drink, have dinner, sometimes we’ll go shopping, just different stuff like that. We enjoy each other’s company and we don’t generally go out of the hotel that much because there’s not much time. You check in, have dinner and then you go to sleep. In the morning, you might work out or whatever or maybe venture outside but basically it’s work and you’re there to get prepared for the show. But every morning at 7 am, Brent would be up and his whole thing is all about coffee. He is very serious about finding where the best coffee is in town! Of course he’s a great drummer but his hobby is coffee! And every day he’d have a friend – he has friends everywhere – and they would go on a coffee hunt with him. So he enjoys life and he gets out there and it’s inspiring. It made me feel that that’s how you do it – that you take advantage of every minute when you’re in these different towns.

And the absolutely fantastic news is of course that you will shortly be heading back to the UK to play eight dates including the absolutely amazing Stonedead Festival. How much are you looking forward to the shows and what can fans expect?

We have a new set list and obviously new songs to play and to add to the set from the Lookin’ For Trouble album and the Light ‘Em Up album. So we are stoked or ‘chuffed’ or whatever you say! (Laughs!) We are really excited to be coming over. One of my favourite places in the world is going to Tokyo or going to Japan. It’s just amazing. There are a lot of great cities in the world that I feel that way about. And definitely, coming to the UK which has a lot of killer cities all in one little location. It’s always exciting. We’ve got a lot of friends there from years and years of being in different bands. The Whitesnake Choir was formed in the UK. So all those people come out to Daisies shows and we just have a blast. So we are very excited to come, we’ve got a new show and we’re ready to throw down and have a great night of rock!