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2003 Kweevak.com CD of the Year Awards Winner A SoundPress.net Feature Article by Sue williams Singer/songwriter Kasim Sulton's latest album Quid Pro Quo was voted the winner of the Kweevak.com "Viewer's Choice" and "Top-50" CD of the Year Awards. Kasim is currently touring as Meat Loaf's Musical Director and bass player on reportedly Meat's last world tour. I caught up with him when he was in London recently.
 In 2003, Kasim Sulton won the "Viewer's Choice" and "Top-50" CD of the Year from Kweevak.com. SW: Kasim, were you expecting to win the award? KS: I've never really received any awards for my music, choosing instead to be thankful and fulfilled by the responses I get through the live shows and emails. This award was a total surprise as there were a lot of albums entered and to be chosen number one when I didn't think I stood a chance was better than getting something that I was wishing for. SW: How autobiographical are the songs on Quid Pro Quo? For example The One Sure Thing is about staying together and Before She Was Gone is about a couple separating - is there a part of you in each of your songs? KS: Yes, sometimes the same thing affects me differently the one time as it does the next so that's why my songs vary so much. Except for something like We The People, there's something in every song that I wrote that I've felt at some point. SW: How do you feel about We The People being associated with 9/11? KS: That song was written a year before 9/11. I wish it wasn't so trendy to have written a song that speaks to a bigger cause. It seemed that right after 9/11, everybody wrote We The People....even the guy who runs the local deli would write a song like "Lest We Forget Our Fallen Heroes" or something like that. It was just something that people felt that they had to do to show their appreciation or their love for their country and the people who had lost their lives. I just wish that I could have got a little bit more exposure for the song. SW: How do you write a song? KS: I vacillate between a couple of ways. Sometimes I'll have a title in mind and that will make me think of a song. Sometimes I might just read something in a book that makes me want to write about it. Sometimes it will be a chord change. It's usually a series of ideas that will come out in either music, lyrics or melody. I have the biggest problem with lyrics - once I get a decent enough lyric, I usually stick to it. SW: Other than some guitar on We The People you play all the instruments and sing all the vocals. How did you record the songs? Do you play the music first and then the vocals? KS: I did all the music first and somewhere along the line, I would record a vocal because it was important not to have the music dictate what the vocal would be. Sometimes after I had recorded a vocal I would realise that it didn't go with an instrument so I would keep a scratch vocal on the tracks and then make sure that everything worked around that. I did a lot of stuff slowly in my basement and for the better part of a year I would work every day on at least one song for the record. SW: Did you complete one song and then move onto the next? KS: No, I did bits and pieces all over the place. My process is SO slow. When you're doing it by yourself you're constantly second guessing (or at least I am). Is this okay? Does this sound right? I'm working at a disadvantage in that I don't have a million dollars worth of recording equipment just to make things sound the best so I really have to take my time and ensure that what I'm doing is sonically correct as well as musically correct. SW: Do you sing the whole song or take a bit from one recording and a bit from another? KS: Usually what I do is I sing the song maybe about 6 or 8 times all the way through and record each one and then I go back and I decide that I like a particular line on a certain track and then I lose it, so then I go to another track and see if I can find a good one on that. And then after I put together the whole song like that, I try and best that again so then I have track or 7 or 8 vocals that I've comped together that makes one complete vocal. And then I sing it again at least one or two times and then I make the decision about whether I keep what I've comped, if I use that or parts of that. Plus by then I'm comfortable singing the song. Usually I find the ad lib part the hardest...trying to do the who, who, wohs and the yeah, yeah, yeahs! I'm not a big yeah, yeah, yeah guy! SW: Do you have any solo gigs booked? KS: Not at the moment. Meat Loaf's plans keep changing so rather than book anything that I may have to later cancel, I'm concentrating all my free time on the road songwriting ready for my next album. SW: You've just started a year long tour with Meat Loaf with concerts in the US, Europe, Britain, Australia and Japan so how do you prepare for a tour like that? KS: We've learnt 20 songs and arrangements. Meat Loaf kept calling me each day with a different song to learn and in the end we'd learnt 20 songs. Normally we do 11 or 12 songs in the show 2 hour 45 minute show so we've learnt double the number that we need. I have a lot of input in the arrangements of the songs on stage. Before Meat comes into the rehearsals the arrangements are what I want them to be. Then he comes in and makes a few changes here and there but the closer I get it to the way he wants to hear it before he comes in makes it easier for him to concentrate on other stuff. It's a totally new show with Meat Loaf. It's an extremely theatrical show, there's a lot of new stuff going on that we've never done before....new songs and new arrangements. In this particular tour I'm busy a lot because there's two new band members and there's a lot more responsibility on me to make sure that the band is together. Renee Cologne is also playing guitar and keyboards in the band so I had to teach her the parts. We're also using a lot more peripheral stuff on the tour that we haven't done before....different equipment. When you see the beginning of the show, you'll be amazed - I'll be on stage but you won't know it's me! SW: As Musical Director how much say do you have over who is in the band? KS: What I do is that I get a few names and then I select about 2-3 people from that and then usually Meat will make the final decision, although in this case, Meat wasn't around so I chose. I picked Randy Flowers as he was head and shoulders above everyone else. With Renee there were two other possible but we wanted someone who could at least play a little guitar. SW: Kasim was in Todd Rundgren's Utopia for nine years and recorded 10 albums with the band. When Utopia wrote a song together how did you accomplish it? KS: What invariably happened on most of the records was that we would come off the road from a tour, have a couple of months off and we'd set a date to start working on the next record. So on that date we'd meet at Todd's house and Todd would have 5 songs written already and he'd say that this is what we're doing! Then he'd play us the songs so we'd say that that's half the record written so all we have to do now is to write the other half! SW: Did the band always accepted what he'd written? KS: On one hand I think that he wanted us to but on the other hand, as much as he wouldn't have liked it, I think he wanted us to only accept two of those songs and reject the others. But we were so afraid of him and of his track record - he was the only one in the band with a proven track record (at that stage he had already produced hugely successful records by The Band, Grand Funk and Bad Finger) and he himself was famous - that we were really holding onto his coattails. Plus he had such a strong personality that it was hard to butt heads with him. And if you did, he would make life miserable so it was easier to go along than to try to force your own ideas against stuff that he felt so strongly about. But I think that in the end that was what really killed the band......he just didn't want to do it any other way but his way. SW: So it was really Todd Rundgren's band? KS: We tried SO hard to make it Utopia. We would beg him to do the kind of record that was expected of us .......that people really wanted to hear. In the end, people wanted whatever we gave them because they could always find something good in what our records turned out to be. The biggest example was what followed up Adventures In Utopia, Deface The Music which was a Beatles parody record. It was a disaster ........ and Todd knew what he was doing, that it wasn't going to be a very big record but I don't think that he wanted the band to be very successful. I think he wanted it to be this kind of quirky side-project. SW: You talk about Utopia not being as commercially successful as it could have been (Kasim wrote their highest placed single which reached #26) but do you ever think about what Utopia could have been? KS: No, to think that is to be unhappy with what it was and I'm not. It was what it was and it was great. It afforded me a career. I'm working today because of Utopia. I still get recognition today through the work I did with Utopia. No, I'm not unhappy about it but I would say that the biggest regret of my career is not realizing what I had until it was gone - the whole Utopia years. I took it all for granted. I hated it while I was doing it but now I miss it badly. Related Links: For more information on Kasim Sulton and the other organizations mentioned please visit the following links -- KasimSulton.com | KasimInfo.com | SphereSound.com
(Originally Published on August 28, 2003) |
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