GEOFF TATE: 'I've Been Doing More Stuff Outside Of QUEENSRŸCHE In Order To Stretch Out'

Casey Pukl of AnthologySD.com recently conducted an interview with vocalist Geoff Tate of Seattle progressive rockers QUEENSRŸCHE. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

AnthologySD.com: What's your writing process like within the band?

Tate: It depends on who's writing the song. If it's Eddie and me for example, we'll work very closely on the arrangement, deciding what's a verse, bridge, chorus, that sort of thing. Then, when it's time to record it, the other guys get involved as far as playing the parts that were written for them. We give them a lot of room to expand on it and put in their own flavor.

AnthologySD.com: Are you looking into any future solo projects?

Tate: I am! I'm actually working on one right now that I hope to have wrapped up pretty soon. This show that I'm doing at Anthology is an acoustic show with some friends of mine who are fantastic acoustic players. We're doing kind of a blend of my last solo album, some QUEENSRŸCHE songs, and we'll toss in some new ones that haven't been released yet. It'll just be a really fun night. Very homey, intimate, we'll probably take requests, things like that.

AnthologySD.com: That's awesome. Is this something you've been doing a lot of lately?

Tate: For the last couple of years, I've been doing more stuff outside of QUEENSRŸCHE in order to just stretch out. But I'll tell you, even though I've sang shows in front of hundreds of thousands of people and also intimate shows of a few hundred, but whenever I go out to an event or something and someone asks me to sing a song with them, I'm petrified! (Laughs) I don't know much material outside of my own material that I've written, and so if someone asks me to sing "Danny Boy", I couldn't sing it! Not even if someone offered me a million dollars could I sing that song. So I'm trying to be a bit more versatile and learn more stuff.

AnthologySD.com: Well, having thirty years of your own material in your head is quite a lot to remember! It's hard to keep track of someone else's stuff.

Tate: That stuff is embedded into my psyche. I could do any of my own stuff at any time, but if it's someone else's' stuff, I have a hard time with it. But I'm expanding my horizons.

AnthologySD.com: It's a different mindset to learn someone else's material. It's a little more mechanical.

Tate: Yeah, it does take a different mindset. You know, my wife manages this band called THE VOODOOS, from Ireland. They're a fantastic band, by the way. Really cool stuff. But the other night we were at a show watching them, and they always ask the audience if anyone else is a musician. And if someone raises their hand, they give them the offer to come up on stage and play a song. It's really cool — a very Irish thing to do. So a guy raised his hand, and the guitar player just handed him his guitar and walked off stage. So the kid looked like he came out of the 1950s. He really looked like he came out of a different time. And he launches into "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash. He just does this amazing version of it out of the blue. It was unrehearsed, out of the blue, and the rest of THE VOODOOS came up on stage and jammed out with him. It was a very cool, very authentic moment. I've seen people do it before, but I'm not someone who can just do something like that, but I want to be. So that's what I've been working on the last few years.

AnthologySD.com: That must really re-energize and inspire you, doing something new like that.

Tate: Oh yeah. Any kind of artistic endeavor, when you've had success doing one thing, you do as many variations on that thing as you can, and then you run out. You need to have some new input and a new direction. We're all looking for that. Everyone is looking for something that will inspire us. It's addictive.

Read the entire interview from AnthologySD.com.