(TRR) – Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan is putting the finishing touches on a brand new studio album. The legendary rocker is working with producer Shooter Jennings on the project. The pair recorded the LP at Station House Studio in Echo Park, CA.
“I wrote a couple of articles about historical places I passed through on this last tour and people kept asking if that was going to be the focus of my next book,” McKagan said about how the album came to fruition. “But an unseen and irrepressible force guided me to write little vignettes of reflective prose…little instant-reactions. The heartbreak, anger, fear, confusion and divide I have experienced over the last two and a half years of traveling this globe of ours coerced these words into songs that tell my truth, and one that I hope will spread and help us all. I do this for my daughters…I do this for my love of where I grew up…I do this, because I truly feel it must be done and said right now.”
“From the first night we sat together at my piano hashing out arrangements of his songs, before going into the studio to record them, I felt it was a really important record that had to be heard,” Jennings stated. “The songs have so much heart and are so musical that I could just hear all the arrangements immediately and I could really feel them.”
“I met Duff right after I moved to Los Angeles nearly twenty years ago,” Jennings said describing his connection with McKagan. “I was such a massive Guns N’ Roses fan when I was younger. I’d say that they had a lot to do with me even moving to LA. But there was some kind of magnetic force I guess that kept us orbiting each other over the years. When the idea of collaborating with him on this album came up, I was very eager to get the job as producer. I felt like the music this man made was part of the fabric of my own musical identity and that I would really love building a record with him. Once we sat down and started going over the songs he had, I instantly knew that the two of us were going to be a great fit together.”
Back in 2015, McKagan released his book, How To Be A Man (And Other Illusions). It was published by Da Capo Press and went on to become a best-seller.