TOM KEIFER Interviewed On San Antonio's 'Daytime At Nine' (Video)

Tom Keifer, best known as the singer/songwriter/guitarist of the Philadelphia-based blues-rock band CINDERELLA, was interviewed by Travis Rodriguez of "Daytime At Nine" this past May in San Antonio, Texas. You can watch the chat below.

Keifer's debut solo album, "The Way Life Goes", sold 5,400 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 78 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD was released on April 30 via Merovee Records (through Warner Music Group's Independent Label Group).

In a recent interview with Examiner.com, Keifer stated about the prospect of going solo: "It was a little scary at first. I've played with the same band for nearly 30 years. Going out on your own is like being on a little block of ice, floating out to sea, I guess. But I've got an incredible band out here, and they're not only great musicians but they really great guys and we get along really well. And Savannah [Tom's wife] is out here and she's part of the show. She comes out and sings some songs with me. The show's a really nice mix of new songs and we're doing a lot of the old CINDERELLA songs so that's familiar for me. It's ingrained in me."

Regarding his songwriting process, Tom told Music Junkie Press: "Well, I try to write from real inspirations and it always starts from a lyric for me. Even the hard and heavy songs that you would think that started on guitars actually started from lyrics. So that inspiration can come at any time; you can be driving down the road or in aisle 6 at Home Depot. You got this idea in your head and then you are racing for an instrument to try and figure out what you are hearing. I will hear a lyric, a songtitle, or a chorus or line or something usually with a melody and it grows from there."

Tom also spoke about the growing trend by music consumers of purchasing and downloading individual songs through digital outlets rather than experiencing full-length albums as they were intended to be heard by the artists that created them.

"I think every generation has their way and it is not wrong," he said. "I think that what would probably help people to be more into whole works of arts or records is that artists create whole works of art or whole records. Like a 'Physical Graffiti' or an 'Exile On Main Street', or 'Hotel California' — [those] are some of the ones I grew up on. Or FLEETWOOD MAC 'Rumors', AEROSMITH's well of them; 'Toys In The Attic'. Those were incredible albums from beginning to end. I think there are still some artists that still do that, but I think with the shrinking budgets at record companies, artist development isn't what it used to be, recording budgets are not what they used to be. So I think less and less, we are not getting great full albums. That is the Catch 22 of the lost revenues from downloading. I don't know that the average listener out there or fan realizes that by swiping music you kind of hurt the art itself and record companies. I mean, I know everyone views the record companies as the big evil corporate thing or whatever, but there is a lot of good that comes from them too. They do help to develop artists, and back in the '60s, '70s and the '80s when we were coming up, they stayed with you and they developed you. They made sure you were working in the best studios, working with the best engineers and the best producers and that is a good thing. That is how you get great albums. That still goes on today; don't get me wrong, I just think it is less artists get the opportunity for that because of the budgets and the mentality of the record companies have changed, due to lost revenues and we all know why. There are many reasons of why that has happened and a lot of that has to do with the technology we have. The second the first audio file transmitted over the Internet we were really all sunk. In terms of what the door it had opened up for causing problems within the industry."

Interview:

Performance (September 7 in York, Pennsylvania):