How do you like the album? Are you pleased with it?
CC: Yeah definitely. I didn't go into it with expecatations I suppose, but even still, now that it's finished and I have enough time away from it just to listen to it for what it is, it is certainly different from anything I would have expected, which is good. I think it's definitely special. It seems to be a lot more soulful, a lot more introspective - which I didn't think was possible - and I guess a bit more mellow than anything you've done with Soundgarden, which may come as a surprise and a bit of a turn off to some people who dug Soundgarden, but from my perspective, the stuff I hear on the album is somewhat similar to Temple of the Dog and even Seasons.
Does it stand to reason then that this album doesn't necessarily represent a change, but rather more like what you've been like all along?
CC: I don't think that that exists. What I've been like or taking this out of the context of things I've done in the past and then still trying to compare it. I definitely think it's a snapshot of a period of time in my life that is most recent in terms of what I represent musically, and that's about it. In these situations, often there's an attempt at a perspective of 'Okay, he was in a band for a long time and now he's doing this, and this is what he wanted to do all along.' I've never looked at it that way at all. I've written a lot of music over the years and the only thing about it that can hearken back to the past is simply that there are influences in it that I've had for years that didn't find their way into the other things I've done. And that definitely exists in this record. But otherwise, to me it feels very much like now and while I was working on it it felt very much like tomorrow.''
I've read a bit about how you've said there was more of a focus taken on the vocals and the lyrics, whereas in the past they've often taken a backseat to the music…
CC: That's kind of a misquote. I've always - and especially lately - felt that the two were equally important and the challenge was if you're really excited about one aspect of a song, not to overlook another aspect of the song based on the strength of the first part. You don't rest on the laurels of a good idea without taking the whole thing as far as you can. I think where the quote came from - the initial idea was that musically, the songs support a vocal melody much more than things I've worked on in the past and therefore the experience of singing them and the experience for the listener of listening to the vocals as well as the lyrics becomes much more intimate and pushed to the forefront at times.
How do you generally come up with a song? Do you write the lyrics first and then try to put the music around it?
CC: I've only written one song in my entire life of songwriting that I wrote the lyrics first. It can be a lyrical idea that's not coming out to anything, and I won't even write them down, it's just something I have that's floating around, and then when I'm working on a musical idea, suddenly there'll be one that musically seems to ask for that musical idea. Then, once the song is arranged and the melody for the vocal exists, then there becomes a vocal phrasing and then I'll actually commit that idea to lyrics knowing the context of the song I'm working in and how it'll fit. Sometimes the lyrical idea and the music come simultaneously, and generally that feels the most natural at the time but I think it would be really hard after the fact for anyone to tell which songs come around that way, and which songs are a marriage of separate ideas. Music can be something where the entire idea comes very quickly and in other situations it can one fairly strong idea that bounces around and seems somehow unarrangeable and then at some point, after a while, it arranges itself and becomes a song.
Something else I read mentioned that you were listening to the Beatles quite a bit while coming up with the stuff for this album…
CC: That's actually not true either. I think that came from the bio where I talk about the Beatles being my first big influence in terms of rock music, which was when I was probably about 9 or 10 years old. That having an impact on me, not even really songwriting so much as the diversity of styles and approaches to singing and more importantly production. They had a playful nature in the studio which, with my first experience in rock music being several of their albums, that somehow became a really strong influence in that that's what rock music is supposed to be. It's not supposed to be a band that just has one sound and then they refine that sound and they become known for that historically. It's that you're constantly changing and growing and going in different directions and experimenting as though you're 50 different bands and having fun with it and doing it as though you're a fan, creating music that you would otherwise want to go into a music store and buy if it wasn't something that you weren't creating.
Considering some of your lyrics, such as Preaching The End of The World for example, I have to wonder why do you write songs and why do you make music? Is it for yourself or is for others? I'm sure you're aware that your music has an effect on other people - is that a factor in making it?
CC: It's not a factor in making it, I think that it's something you're charged to do. Whether it's that or whether it's being an inventor of some kind - that's the way I've always looked at it, as inventing something. There's a challenge in there and there's also a payoff in there, when you create something that inspires you, it comes with a feeling of accomplishment as well as a feeling of elation that you've created something that no one else could have done. You kind of get addicted to that and you go chasing after that feeling. I think it has to initiate from you wanting to inspire yourself and wanting to entertain yourself. I've always written and played music as a hobby first, but having said that I'm definitely in a privileged position that once something is finished and I feel really inspired by it, I'll immediately have the thought of ''people will get to hear this. What will they think? What will their response be? Will they be inspired?'' Whenever I think that, I definitely feel fortunate that I can say without a doubt that some people will hear it, and that's definitely a positive thing.
This is paradoxical: loneliness is quite a big theme in much of what you've done. You seem to be a loner - aren't loners condemning themselves to loneliness?
CC: I suppose it's possible. It also depends on someone that commits themselves to being a loner. There's people who are much more isolated than me, definitely, I mean I have a wife and I live in a part of the world where almost all of my family lives and I have friends, so I'm not sure if I could consider myself a loner as much as someone who's just reclusive and not particularly social, compared to a lot of people that I know. But I also think that being someone who is creating a lot ends up being in a situation of loneliness sometimes anyway. It's a strange thing to do all of the time. There's nobody that can tell you when you wake up in the morning and clock in that this is your job today and this is how you do it. There's people on the peripheral saying, ''When you're finished with your job, let us know so that we can figure out what the hell to do with it.'' But as I said before, you have to invent it and that can be a separatist experience in a way. There are a handful of people in my life that in some situations can help me with that, whether they're helping me musically or whether it's just my observations of them and somehow or another they're influencing that invention. But I think to a degree it has to be a lonely thing to do.
When making a solo album, why did you seek out collaborators? Were you not confident in going it completely alone?
CC: I definitely had enough material for it to be on a record. It had nothing to do with anything on the outside of me and what I was doing, it was really a personal decision for me to make something that was well rounded and entertaining enough for me I suppose, and it was something that really happened toward the end of the project. The thought never crossed my mind that this somehow doesn't make it necessarily a solo record. There's solo artists like Elton John, who never wrote any lyrics, and there's some solo artists who never write any music at all, they're just performers and singers and are considered artists somehow. To me the idea that it being a solo record was much more based on that whatever happens, it's my responsibility and it's my choice. At some point I chose to include collaborations.
What was the dynamic with the Eleven guys? Was there a limit to how much they were ''allowed'' to contribute?
CC: Because it happened near the end, it was really a kind of last minute thing. There was no time for parameters and ultimately because it was my record, parameters never really factored into it. It was like, ''hey, we've got a couple of ideas, why don't you listen to them?'' I'd listen to them and say ''I don't like that and I don't like that, but I do like this, and they'd do something with that and then we would work on it. Throughout the recording of the album it was a similar thing. Anybody that had an idea, that idea was welcome, but it was also a known quality that at the end of the day, the responsibility of the choice was mine and that is a very different situation than say a band collaboration, where if somebody's very passionate about something, you're going to do it, whether you want to or not. That's what makes a band, that's what makes the sound of a band. That's why this is in a sense very different.
Why of all the potential collaborators you could have had did you go with these guys?
CC: I wasn't really inspired by anybody else. I wouldn't have done it if it was anybody else. I've spent a lot of time with them over the past year, even before I started writing and we had done other things together musically - they had recorded a song of mine for a movie soundtrack and we collaborated on a version of Ave Maria for a benefit record and we had already had this friendship that was turning into a musical collaboration as well. There was no one else who was making themselves available that I was interested in. I wasn't really looking for it, but because it was there, it felt like an opportunity and a very natural one. It was really up to the last seven or eight days before I was ready to start recording that we even chose to record the record together. It just kind of fell into place.
How much control do you have in booking the venues you play?
CC: The entire attitude of this tour was based on a discussion I had with management on what size venues did I want to play and where. I gave them my opinion, which was I wanted to play small theatres based on the idea that the experience of the live show is going to be much more of a listener's experience than someone who participates physically. And theatres sound good for music as opposed to other venues. And that was the beginning and the end of the discussion.
What are your long-term plans?
CC: I will probably take things one record at a time. Being a solo artist is for me right now a really attractive idea because a lot of it has to with the scheduling, and being able to make those decisions of when I will start to work and what it will be when it feels comfortable to me. No one will be waiting around for me, I won't be making any decisions that affect anyone else's lives in terms of other musicians or band members.
Do you feel yourself getting older?
CC: Whether I do or not, I think or not. My passport will suggest it.
What's the story with the French song?
CC: All the songs that were recorded for the album were all the songs that were attempted to be recorded. Basically I wanted to go in with 10 songs and have that be the album. The version of Sweet Euphoria was a demo that I'd done at home and I still really liked it and didn't think it could be improved on really, and that ended up being the 11th song. Flutter Girl was a song that had been around for quite a while - it's the only song that is an older song - and I just felt lyrically it fit with everything else, so why not do that as well, so we rearranged it musically quite a bit and that ended up being the 12th song. For an international release, for import/export reasons, they always want something that's not on the domestic release, and I always hate doing that because it changes the dynamic of the whole album. So I figured why not just do a different version of a song already on there. To make it a lot different, why not do it in a different language? That song felt it would be good in French if it was arranged properly. I learned how to sing the words in French - I had to find someone that could translate it correctly which isn't very easy to do, I found.
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