More Than Just ‘80s Rock
The most successful recording duo in music history, Daryl Hall and John Oates rock Blaisdell Arena in a concert on March 5
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written with John or the songs he has written. They are frameworks, lyrics, melodies and chords, and after that they are open to interpretation and evolution - and that’s really what I have done over the years,” says Hall. “They are completely recognizable as our songs, but the arrangements change sometimes - even the instrumentation changes - as one plays the songs over the years. Also, there is a lot of room for improvisation. It’s soul music, and you never do the same thing twice.”
Or, as Oates points out: “We’ve never fallen into the trap of becoming a human juke box. We hate that and we won’t do it.”
The mature musicians don’t record and tour like they once did. Age and the need to express themselves in other ways have led to projects, that, as usual, are separate yet connected.
Hall’s project is the Web-based program Live from Daryl’s House, a musician’ jam session filmed at his upstate New York home that includes an eclectic group of performers from electrofunk duo Chromeo to Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump and Soul super legend Smokey Robinson.
“I think the technology caught up with my head,” says Hall, now 65 and looking very much like he did two decades ago. “I’ve always liked to collaborate with people and put strange and unusual combinations together. When I played live over the years, many times I’ve done kind of a Daryl’s House sort of thing at the end of the show. I thought, why don’t I combine this with sort of the back porch and do it at my house, bring the people to me and turn everything on its head. The result is a very unique and fun thing to do.”
One would think such talented rosters would demand a format more broad-based than the Internet. But Hall says the opposite is true.
“There is a certain immediacy that can’t happen on TV. I felt there would be too many restrictions, everything from language to attitude to ease of flexibility. Television wants you to be a certain way. I’ve talked to a lot of producers and people in television, and they say we have to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Why don’t you add a contest, or why not have an audience member come up and play? They always want you to do the conventional thing. In order to do anything new, you have to go to a new medium.”
Hall says the purpose of the show, which began in 2007, is to break down the wall between artist and audience; to let the viewer see the musicians as who they are, not performers dedicated to “doing their act.”
Oates had a similar idea.
“A few years ago I started exploring the idea of breaking everything down. I realized to differentiate myself from what I do with Hall and Oates, I wanted to go completely in the opposite direction, and I started getting involved in the singer/songwriter movement in a very organic way, just playing my songs, new songs, old songs and everything in between.”
That format led to the creation of the 7908 Aspen Songwriter’s Festival, which is now in its second year.
“It gives the audience the chance to hear the music as it was written. I don’t think many people differentiate between a record and a song. To me, they are two distinct things. The song is what happens when a songwriter writes it, and a record is what happens when the studio, the production, the technology and the players and the other things get involved. I like to strip it back to the song and celebrate the beauty of the songwriting process.”
While in Hawaii, Hall will record a special Live from Daryl’s House on Kauai with Garden Isle resident Todd Rundgren. From there, the purposely titled, Do What You Want, Be What You Are Tour continues for a few more Mainland dates before Oates heads out for some solo shows. Both have solo records near completion. Oates calls his latest, Mississippi Mile, very raw, while Hall says his yet-unnamed work will be very aggressive. Just like everything else, connected but unique.
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