Q & A...

Here's yet another great interview from Mike Diver and the BBC Music Blog.

Artist: Josh Groban
Album: Illuminations
Recommended by: Loose Ends, Edith Bowman's Album Show

Since releasing his debut album in 2001 (after singing beside the likes of Elton John and Stevie Wonder!), Los Angeles-born singer Josh Groban has gone on to sell over 24 million albums worldwide. Balancing on the fine line between easy listening and pop with occasional classical leanings, his songs have reached a wide variety of audiences. With his latest collection, Illuminations, Groban has set his sights on UK listeners like never before - you might well have caught him guest presenting Never Mind The Buzzcocks in 2010. The album, produced by Rick Rubin, also marks the first time Groban has co-written his own material. Clearly, the man is stepping up a few gears and moving into a new stage of his career. We caught up with him on a recent promo tour, at his London hotel...
- - -

So it seems, from where UK observers are sat, that this record represents something of a push into the British market. Is the idea at the moment to take your huge stateside success and try to plant some of it on this side of the Atlantic? It already feels like this is your most successful record here, though I've not seen any figures...

I'm the same - I've not seen the figures but this does feel like it's my biggest record here so far. And I think, in my head, there's been a concerted effort to reach UK audiences since album one - but it had to happen a certain way in the United States, and certain stars have simply lined up. This time around TV shows, over here, have given me the time of day. There have been a number of things with this campaign which made us think: the spaghetti against the wall approach is actually working, you know? It's sticking this time. So before I'd be saying, "What, one appearance and then we fly back?" That's not how you break an artist. This time, though, I've been able to do several things on each visit. And also, I've made it a priority within my team to do whatever we can. My sleeves are rolled up for this album, so I said: "I'm ready to work." I know I'll get exhausted, and I know I can't be everywhere at once, but I must've been here six or seven times for this album, so I'm really happy to see that the hard work is paying off.

Illuminations seems to have been really well received in the UK, critically. Is that some sort of vindication, after knocking on the door here so many times and getting turned away, at least in terms of reviews?

I think so, yeah. You can't force anyone to accept you, or take you in as their own. In the States it started with the music, and then I had to show people that I was a real boy, a real human being too.

You were rather thrown into the deep end in the States, of course.

Very much so. Everything exploded for me. And I think the luxury of breaking the UK step by step, year by year, peeling away the layers of the onion, has enabled people to see who I am first, and then introduce them to my music second. It's been great to go on shows like ...Buzzcocks, and Graham Norton's show, and be myself. I love that this country has been more open to accepting this image, of a well-rounded person, rather than someone who just does this one thing.

It must have taken you a while to make yourself heard, around and shortly after the first few albums. I imagine everyone was telling you to do this, to sing that... You were only 19 when the debut came out, so it must have been a very dizzying, confusing but exciting time for you.

Yes. First of all, I was terrified. Nothing can prepare you for that sort of pressure, for going from blissful anonymity to the flavour of the whatever... People knew my name, and immediately began to judge me. I can understand why certain people go off the deep end. I was lucky - even in the States, when things were blowing up for me, I was never a hyped artist, or a press darling. I was never made to feel like a God among men in the States; it was always a case of me having a connection with my fans, and everyone else was kind of dismissive. I think, when I look back in hindsight, that kept me really grounded, and feeling like I should keep doing what's real, as the superficial stuff isn't paying me any attention. All I had was the music and the fans, so that kept things going the right way.

By not being everyone's flavour of the month, you seem to have achieved success through being that somebody's flavour instead. It's quite an unusual approach, by today's standards. The National, maybe, are the last band I can think of who've achieved a high level of success very slowly, over here.

Well, I never expect to be the one at a big party who everyone is stopping to turn to look at; but I always have the silent satisfaction that I've usually sold more records than anyone else at the same party. (Laughs) You know, I'm kinda like a silent assassin. I've kept my head down, flown under the radar, and quietly had a really successful career. For me, that's the best of all worlds. I don't have to worry about paparazzi, and I can make albums that I know my fans will want to hear all of - which is today's market is a real blessing. And if people turn their heads, then they turn their heads. There's still a long way to go, but at least some people are listening now. It's an old-school approach, you know. Slippery When Wet was Bon Jovi's third album - nowadays, nobody would have waited that long. For me, to take 10 years to break the UK... are you kidding? I'm lucky, as most people wouldn't even get 15 minutes. In the old days you could grow from album to album, so I feel really lucky to have been able to take my time.

Do you think if you'd exploded into popularity now, but didn't impact on the UK relatively simultaneously, that you'd have the chance to work slowly over here?

Yes, 100%. The business has changed so much since I started - albeit through no fault of the people who work at my label. It's just a bottom line thing, and everyone's working with a gun to their head. And that isn't conducive to real creative growth. There's a lot of pressure. I'd go so far to say that even if I'd had a hit single on the first album, if the album itself didn't perform to the standards expected today, I'd never get the chance to do a second one. But again, I've been very lucky to have so much support from my fans. I've seen at least two or three regime changes at the label, so to still be around is quite something.

When making this album, did you think that there'd be people picking it apart, only downloading certain tracks?

Well, this is where having the real, diligent focus of Rick Rubin was very helpful. I think he is an amazing grounding force to some amazing personalities that he works with. I needed someone to focus me - I was getting a little scattered by the business and was starting to freak out a little bit. I'd just done a Christmas record (2007's Noël) which I didn't think would do anything, but that was exploding. So, creatively, after that, where could I go? I was a bit confused. But I managed to relax, and realised that I didn't need to make an album out of pressure, or out of fear. When I first started talking to Rick, it seemed so odd on paper - but what we shared was actually genre. Even in his old interviews, when asked about hip hop and heavy metal, he didn't get into those worlds to be an impresario; he sees genres that he thinks he can somehow change for the better. So he came to this genre, and saw things he liked and other things he did not. So he was excited about taking a risk in working with me, and I was excited to have him in my ear. So I think having him, instead of several producers on one record, just eagle-eyeing it to make sure we stayed at a consistent level, was really helpful.

You look at the gap between albums on paper and it seems a long time - your last studio LP proper came out in 2006. Did Illuminations take longer than any other album in your career to come together?

Well, I toured a lot. If you don't do your homework, which I should have done, then you're on tour for a long time, and you come off without having written anything new. Now that I am writing a lot more, that's changed - I write everywhere, whether I'm touring or not. Rick and I had a prolonged getting-to-know-you period. We both wanted it to happen, but didn't want to force anything. Early on, we were not pleased with what was coming out of the speakers. His programmers and engineers are among the best in the business, but they're not able to make you sound that good if you weren't already. They will use their expertise to make the cleanest sound, but you have to sound good on top of that. I think there are a lot of proactive producers who get off on taking something rough and moulding it to their style, putting too much of themselves into it in the process, but Rick is all about the artist earning their face on the front of the record. So we went into a dry room, and if we weren't comfortable that day you could hear it on the track. So we rehearsed lots, and really worked on the arrangements - when, when we came to record, it was like a performance at Carnegie Hall. We'd made ourselves ready in the right way.

Did you feel that the best-of, 2008's The Collection, was a good way of effectively closing the first chapter of your career, now that you're writing your own material and working in a different way?

Definitely. My best-of thing here was a bit different to a lot of peoples' best-ofs - to them, such a release comes after they've peaked, but for me it was a way of introducing myself. But it was also a way to say goodbye to a part of my musical career - these are songs that I am proud of, and that will always be a part of what I do, but now it's time to move on and do something different. So it did feel like a changing of chapters of sorts.

Did Rick introduce you to much new music?

Oh yeah. Many of our early meetings were just listening sessions. We'd sit down at his house by the water, with this great speaker system, and go through tonnes of songs, mining them for ideas as well as simply listening for pleasure. We went through so many songs, through world music and rock... When we came across Straight to You, the Nick Cave song, we thought: "Wow, what a lyric, what a message... What a darkly dramatic opus". He suggested we do this arrangement of it, and I wasn't sure. With a cover song, you have to stay clear of just stylising it in a certain way, to tick a box. Rick was confident I could make it my own - he told me to not listen to Cave's version at all, once the decision was made, and instead just focus on the words and how I could interpret them. When we got together with James Newton Howard, to arrange it at Capitol Records, we had this demo but I was still terrified to perform it in front of everyone. What would the musicians think? But when we finished the first take, everyone tapped their instruments to say, there's something special here. That was the first song we recorded, and we always knew it would finish the album. And it was great to get a message from Nick Cave, via Rick, that he liked it.

Finally, what are your favourite albums of the year so far? Since Illuminations came out last year, I'll let any 2010 releases stand...

Oh man... Well, I listened to the new Adele record last night, and it's beautiful. Rick worked on that at the same time he was working on my album, so it was fun to hear how they each shaped up. She's also done a lot of writing with Dan Wilson, who I worked with a lot on Illuminations. I loved The National's album of last year, and was thrilled that Arcade Fire did so well at the Grammy Awards. It's a wonderful thing to see a band do things the right way, to come from grassroots to the radio, to worldwide success. It's a little like what Muse have achieved in the States. There's a lot of good stuff out there right now... Lykke Li I just listened to, as we were in Dublin at the same time. I think she's on the verge of really breaking big. I loved the last Neil Young record, Le Noise, too.

(Source)

Another great interview...

Josh Groban has sold 24 million records, dueted with Andrea Bocelli, and packed concert halls across the globe. Not bad for someone who did not set out to become a singer.

Groban launches his “Straight to You” tour of the U.S. and Canada on May 12 in New Orleans. It is his first full-scale outing since his sold-out 81-city “Awake” tour in 2007.

This summer is shaping up to be a busy time for the 30-year-old southern California native, who will make his feature film debut July 29 in the comedy “Stupid, Crazy, Love” with Emma Stone and Steve Carell.

Prior to tour rehearsals, Groban spent part of a fine spring afternoon talking about touring, acting and his critically acclaimed, best-selling album “Illuminations.”

A 61-date North American tour has to be daunting. What do you do to keep your voice in shape?

I do a number of things to make sure my mind and body are ready to go through that. I do travel with a voice coach because it is easy to fall into traps. It’s great to have someone that is really listening to you outside of yourself. That’s a necessity for me, just to make sure someone is out there looking after me. Other than that, it is setting up a show so that you are singing songs in the right order that really kind of warm you up as you go. I think the other dirty little secret is that when I am on tour it’s actually a luxury not to have to worry about doing anything else in my life, except for worrying about those two hours every night. My voice is actually more tired when I am off the road and my phone is going constantly and I am in meeting after meeting. I may have to sing one song on a talk show, but that one song feels like so much more work than 15 do on a night when I have had nine hours of sleep and I am rehearsed and ready and inviting people into my world every night. It goes by very, very quickly. As long as I eat right and don’t burn the candle at both ends, my voice is pretty strong.

You will soon be making your feature film debut in “Crazy, Stupid, Love” with Steve Carell and Emma Stone. What was that like?

It’s a small role in a very, very big film and I am very excited for the chance to be in that. I started in theater. I started in comedy and so to be able to work with such extraordinary actors and to be able to find myself in an environment that was not totally familiar to me after being in a (recording) studio all year and then to be on a movie set was really, really fun. Emma Stone was so great to work with. She was so nice. It’s a fun thing when something extracurricular comes your way. It’s something I’d like to do more of in the future.

What is your role in the film?

I play Emma Stone’s fiancé. I am a jerk, kind of caddish kind of lawyer, who tells bad jokes at the dinner parties and embarrasses her in front of her friends. I will leave it at that. Very funny things happen. It was great. I nailed it on one audition, which really made me happy at first, then I realized what the part was and it was like “Oh God, that’s not really the kind of person you want to nail.” (chuckles)

So acting was your first love?

It was… I went to Carnegie Mellon for musical theater before I got signed. The singing was something I was kind of doing on the side to be a better actor – and it turned out I was way better at singing.

For your latest album, “Illuminations,” you teamed with producer Rick Rubin of Metallica and Red Hot Chili Peppers fame. How did that come about?

We were introduced by a mutual friend, a great guy named Guy Oseary, who is Madonna’s manager and creator of Maverick Records. Guy and I have dinner every now and then. He asked if I ever met Rick, and I said no. I am a huge fan of his work and he’s one the only guys in the industry I haven’t met because he is a hard guy to meet because you don’t see him at things. He doesn’t show up at the awards show for his own Grammy. It happened very naturally. We had lunch and had such a great talk about music and what we were working on and what we wanted to do in the future. I quickly realized that any kind of fears I had about his mythology were for all the right reasons as far as how successful he’s been, but for all the wrong reasons for the kind of guy I thought I would be meeting based on the kind of music he made. He has single handedly shifted rock and hip hop and I thought, “Oh God, is he going to get my world? Is he going to be hard edge to talk to?” He just couldn’t have been nicer. He was so open-minded about my music and all types of music. I realized right away we had the potential to have a really amazing musical friendship. We became very good friends at first. Once he started listening to songs I was writing he started giving me some great notes on them. Those notes turned into us saying “Why don’t we just do this together?”

“Illuminations” has a very clean sound.

That’s one of things I was excited about working with Rick on. My kind of music is big on its own. My singing is fairly large and the orchestrations and arrangements – just the content of the songs – are all pretty grand. And yet, it seems to be a genre that producers want to throw as much on top of that as possible. Rick and I both didn’t think we needed it. People can call it intimate or they can call it a quieter record if they want, but we didn’t think it was all that quiet at all. We wanted it to sound like what it sounded like. We wanted the mikes to be just turned on. We wanted to be in there playing music. I like that Rick had the bravery to make a record like that with me.

Do you think that particular sound will transfer to a live setting much better?

I think it definitely gives us, me and my band, the inspiration to take the new songs live. In some ways, we are going to shape them and shift them a little differently live. I think we can add things that Rick has always said, “Just because there is a continuity to what a record is, doesn’t mean you can’t completely rework them for a tour.” Sometimes we are going to that and sometimes we are going to take from that intimate feel and create a more intimate vibe with them on stage. Yeah, whenever you record like that live in such a live atmosphere it just makes the bringing-that-out-before-an-audience part so much more fun.

Is this a recording sound you want to continue making?

Any time you do one thing for a couple of years, you get the itch to try new things. It’s a combination of certain things that I can’t wait to do again, but that I have been spoiled with on this record – just the way recorded and the integrity in which we got in there with the musicians. But, at the same time, I don’t want to make this record again because I just made it. There are a number of things I am definitely going to want to put back into my melting pot for the next record. Whether that means it’s a project for Rick and I or whether it means we will part ways, we really haven’t decided. We’re kind of enjoying what we’ve done now. The fun that we have with these songs on the road is going to tell us a lot about where we go for the next record.

Recording, touring, acting. What do you do in your down time?

Today was a great day off. I woke up in New York. It was 60 degrees… I just walked in the park with my dog. I hit a taco truck and kind of people watched and enjoyed breathing for a minute. I just came off a grueling European promo tour and your life is not your own sometimes when you are being dragged around like that. It’s very rewarding, it’s very fun and I love the work, but there is something about going back doing real simple things like going out to a movie or having a drink with friends.

(Source)

Rehearsals - Sneak Peek Part 3...

I'm so happy to see that Josh is doing something on the drums for the tour...

Crazy Stupid Love Release Dates...

USA  --  29 July 2011
Germany  --  11 August 2011
Norway  --  12 August 2011
Italy  --  19 August 2011
Australia  --  25 August 2011
UK  --  2 September 2011
Greece  --  22 September 2011
Sweden  --  23 September 2011
Finland  --  30 September 2011

Josh the Magician...

JOSH GROBAN, 30, may have sold more than 24 million records worldwide but who knew the Californian was also a skilled magician?

As a kid I found myself fascinated by escape artists, especially Harry Houdini. I got obsessed with reading books about him and wanted to emulate him. I asked my parents for a pair of handcuffs but I couldn’t wriggle out of them so escapology clearly wasn’t for me.

Then I found that just down the street from my childhood home in Los Angeles was a store called Hollywood Magic and that was like nirvana to me.

After visiting it I became this 11-year-old boy obsessed with grand illusions. I remember thinking how cool it would be to turn a girl into a tiger, which wasn’t at all realistic and I wound up taking after-school magic classes.

We learned sleight of hand so we could perform card tricks and make coins disappear and since I’m extremely double-jointed, I was very good at it.

My obsession became so feverish that when I was 12 I auditioned to be a junior member of The Magic Castle, which is headquarters to the prestigious Academy of Magical Arts.

It’s this big old house in the Hollywood hills that has been completely tricked out with hidden doorways and secret passages. You have to say a password before they even let you in and you have to take an oath pledging that you’ll never give away any of the secrets.

It’s such a cool place; I’d been there for a friend’s birthday party and thought: “It’d be the greatest thing ever to be a member.”

One day I just decided to go for it but I’d been so busy with schoolwork that I hadn’t had time to practice properly and during the audition I dropped the coin I was meant to make disappear.

In all my years as a performer that’s the only time I’ve truly ended up with egg on my face and I was devastated. It didn’t stop me practising magic but I realised it was something I should do for friends and family rather than as a professional.

I was a shy kid at school and a bit socially awkward so I never got into any cliques but I found the other kids thought it was cool when I did magic. I also found I was good at what they call street magic, which is where you do things like getting someone to choose a number and then you guess it. I can’t tell you how that’s done because I still keep the oath, just in case The Magic Castle change their mind and ask me to re-audition.

I bought videos and books at Hollywood Magic and would practise constantly.

One of the tricks I loved was the “sewing needle through the arm” illusion, which is self-explanatory and can be achieved through the use of fake blood, much to the shock and awe of your audience. It always went down well at the shows I and my younger brother Chris, whom I recruited as my assistant, would put on for the family at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Many of the tricks I learned as a kid I still do at dinner tables and parties. I love the salt shaker through the table stunt, which is where you cover a salt shaker with a napkin, slam it on a table and it disappears. That gets them going “ooh” and “aah”.

I also got to meet David Blaine, one of my heroes. I was at a party where he appeared to eat an entire water glass in front of my eyes; he bit off pieces of glass and chewed until they were like sand in his mouth and then he swallowed the grains.

I’m not sure if that was a trick or if he actually ate that glass but it was really impressive. I haven’t tried to do it myself.

I’ve also got a signed photo of David Copperfield, who came along to one of the magic classes I took as a youngster. He had us all learn a trick and the one who performed it best got a signed picture. I’m proud to say that was me, even though I can’t for the life of me remember what the trick was.

All these years later I’m still learning new stuff. The one thing I’d love to master is levitating.

There are people who are so masterful they trick your eye into thinking they’re raising someone off the ground and whenever I see it I think: “How do they do that?” I kind of like that. Although I practise magic, I’d never want to get to the point where I know how everything is done because I still want to be wowed.

Josh Groban’s album, Illuminations, is out now.

Article by Simon Button from Express.co.uk - Original Source