Who Sings Background None So Beautiful Gino Vannelli

The Los Angeles jazz-fusion bassist on the relationship between music and alcohol, the greatness of Gino Vannelli and why you should eat on the toilet

THUNDERCAT at Danforth Music Hall (147 Danforth), Tuesday (February 28), doors seven pm. $20. rotate.com, soundscapesmusic.com, ticketmaster.ca.

Thundercat'south fourth album will exist an intimidating addition to tape shop shelves. Its cover features a portrait of the Los Angeles-based bassist, aka Stephen Bruner, submerged upwards to his nose in water and glaring disconcertingly. He could be a movie villain rising from a watery grave, poised to pounce from the sleeve on an unsuspecting shopper perusing a record bin.

Then you consider the title hovering above his furrowed brow: "Drunk."

"The claiming was to convey the thought with the seriousness but at the aforementioned time the silliness," he says over the phone. "That confused look was genuine. I was like, 'What the hell am I doing?' That'southward the feeling of the album, too."

A seasoned player who has worked with Suicidal Tendencies, Erykah Badu, Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamar, Bruner has evolved from sideman to front-stage performer as Thundercat. His last release, the mini-album The Beyond/Where The Giants Roam, was inspired by grief.

Drunkard encompasses meowing, farting, snoring, heartache and mourning. Tonally, it grows more than confused and weary as it progresses, its freewheeling harmonies and melodies interrupted by jazz-fusion bass lines that zigzag and tumble around like frantic video game characters. It features a cameo past Lamar, likewise as two of Bruner's singer/songwriter heroes, Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald. The easygoing 80s icons spontaneously re-teamed for the beginning time in years after Bruner invited Loggins to collaborate.

Speaking with Bruner is non dissimilar listening to his album. He segues between heavy and mundane topics, outright idiocy and nerdy music references with a fluidity befitting his reputation as a musician.

Why call the album Drunk?

It's something that describes the feeling of what's going on now. Anybody just sounds crazy. It comes from a lot of ascertainment and recording of what I've seen over the terminal 15 years amongst my friends and peers. Music and drinking are good old friends.

Why do you lot recollect music and drinking are so intertwined?

It's not an easy road to exist a musician or a person who pursues artistic creativity. You get yanked through doors and pulled and pushed – information technology's like this electric current that happens, and yous spring in and have to be very lucid to come across through most of it or deal with it. And alcohol is one of those things that people have like shooting fish in a barrel admission to.

Do yous think drinking ever helps creativity?

I don't think drinking ever is something that would help anybody [laughs]. There'southward ever Bukowski, but at the aforementioned time information technology'south one of those things that has ups and downs. It has its own life – that's why they call it spirits. Some people connect and some people don't.

Lately, so much pop and hip-hop music is about self-medicating and a desire to be completely numb.

There's a dark story in that location. Information technology is hard to pursue artistic endeavours, have the world love you all at one time and so hate you simply as quick. It's something a normal person would not experience on a 9-to-5 job, so to speak. A lot of the time it feels like you need help through it, I would recall.

What's your human relationship to booze?

I don't drink. I have, and in my personal experience, it'south been fun. And information technology'due south been crazy. And information technology's been wild, but at the same time – I forget who said it – you lot gotta know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. It's just 1 of those things: you have to know when to permit go more than than anything, which is a claiming in and of itself.

Yous've said that Erykah Badu will inquire you to play a colour, like red. Tin you play "boozer"? Is there such a thing every bit a drunk bass line?

Oh human being, it'd be very theatrical. It'd be something really dramatic to practice. A lot of the time a audio is about understanding as compared to the actual experience. Information technology's something that yous've lived with. It comes through naturally in your feel, simply at the same time life takes more precedence over booze when it comes to playing. I've never tried to exist influenced by booze when playing.

Is that y'all meowing on A Fan's Postal service?

That'due south me meowing. I call information technology the Suite II for Tron. That's me loving my cat once again. I love my cat. I don't know how many times I'll say it, merely I do honey my fucking true cat. There's moments when people will think I'thou singing to a daughter but, no, that's about my cat.

One song is chosen Helm Stupido. Is that an alias?

Everybody has information technology in them to exist Captain Stupido. Capitalize on the stupid part. Sometimes you gotta get stupid with yourself and y'all gotta enjoy your own visitor some fourth dimension.

Whatever tips on how to exercise that?

Yeah, buy a bullhorn. Trip the light fantastic toe with your true cat naked. Pick things on yourself and olfactory property them. Stand at the refrigerator even though you know there's cipher in that location. Sit on the toilet and autumn slumber on the toilet. Play video games on the toilet. Eat on the toilet. Undercook a bag of beans, eat it and try not to die. There's all kinds of fun things.

You worked with Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald on this album. How did you get into Loggins'south music?

I'm very much into everything when information technology comes to music. Loggins and McDonald I tend to have a love thing with, musically. You don't realize y'all're having information technology until yous're singing their songs in the grocery store. Yous hear Michael come on in the background and you start singing HELLA LOUD. You're like, "Ooh, this is MY PART!" You try to sing it in his phonation or Kenny'south voice.

I continued to Kenny a little bit later in life because I was looking for inspiration for how to arroyo songwriting. I would listen to him, and information technology would very heavily touch on me as time progressed. I took Kenny's music very seriously. I'd hear the person in the music and try to understand him more every bit a person through his music.

Ane of my favourite tunes is Heart To Heart. That is a tell-all. Yous can hear the pain human being in there. You can hear the guy in there who'due south been through a lot. I continued with that. I understood that. That's where the fandom would come up in.

The show Archer has turned him into this jokey ironic hero, but he'south embraced that past actualization on the show.

You have to. If somebody can make a joke about you on TV, that's and then beautiful. You've afflicted popular culture to that degree. Yous've got to be able to laugh at yourself at the end of the mean solar day.

What are your thoughts on Gino Vannelli?

I love Gino Vannelli! I love every i of his albums. He's 1 of my favourite songwriters – straight up. He's from Canada, of course. The moment when you realize the Bee Gees are singing backup on his album… it's the picayune nuances that make yous become "whoa." And the songwriting was so immense.

Information technology smacked me like a ton of bricks considering it was a spousal relationship of jazz-fusion and the singing. People have to tried to bear upon moments that are a lilliputian jazz-fusiony, only what Vannelli was on to was so big and alee of its time.

He has no fear of gigantic creation. You could hear the theatrics, but you could likewise hear the struggle in his music. I was a huge fan of that.

I retrieve the start time I heard him – my brother sampled information technology. He was making a drum beat and sampled the intro to Brother To Brother, and I was just like, "Who the hell played these chord changes?"

So I plant the album and I listened to it over once more. Past the time you get to Nightwalker and the vocal Living Inside Myself – 80s Vannelli – you're just similar, "Whoaaaaaaa!" I will stop in the grocery store with my fists balled singing the shit out of that song. Commonly you'll notice a person who doesn't understand it and yous have to say the lyrics to them. Similar, "Listen to what he's proverb! Mind!"

To the other grocery store shoppers?

People are looking, like, "What the hell is wrong with you?" But he's talking most struggling with what love is and trying to understand and having a hard time conveying information technology. Existence able to word that is so frickin' cute. That'due south what Gino Vannelli was to me. I actually reached out to see if he'd work with me on the album, simply I didn't hear back. It's non something that I take offence to. He's a songwriting titan.

Who are your other songwriting titans?

Waylon Jennings, Conway Twitty, Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, the Four Freshmen, the Embankment Boys and Brian Wilson, of form. Prince is a chief.

What exercise you like well-nigh Prince?

Everybody loves to tag on to this sexual Prince: "Ooh, Prince made it sexy." Only that actually speaks more to his damaged side, in my opinion. Prince is very much more virtually the sensitive side, and that was finite in the music. It expressed less almost the harm compared to love. His first album, For You, is one of the most beautiful albums you could ever listen to. My Love Is Forever is one of my favourite songs e'er.

Drunk comes out February 24 via Brainfeeder.

kevinr@nowtoronto.com | @kevinritchie

Kevin Ritchie

Kevin has worked in journalism for 20 years, first as a general assignment reporter earlier being sucked into the glamorous life that is arts and entertainment coverage. Kevin now contributes to music, tv, picture show and civilization.