Will Turpin About The Collective Soul Story and Bourbon & Beyond 2025

0:04 Hi, you live done too year censure. For see Wow for you young? Did I end up here? I would like to now invite you into work for that could sold. Started October of ninety three, but I didn't have a band. It was just me in a basement making these songs.

0:45 And my brother Bean was going to Georgia stay, and I said, just take this tape in there. He started playing shine and people loved it. It was it was crazy. If people called in what is this song? I want to hear more of it? It was like within two months, I'm on one on MTV everything. We're a bunch of country bumpkins that just are like, what is going on? We were gone my. Next Yes one of those fire for their bands and music today, please welcome Collective Soul. Now we're getting when parents bringing their kids and it becomes a generational connection. People tell you how much it means to them, how much the songs mean to them, that we've become the soundtrack to people's lives.

1:30 I've been warning great songwriters of all time cover song my Room and. Win a Granny. I have love Collective Soul for more years than I count. If I don't write, if I don't play an instrument in the day. I'm not mean. He definitely has a lot of energy, because that dude does not stop writing, always writing, always creating. My mind doesn't shut off. The idea comes quick and then the song comes within an hour. Then I send it to Sean. He is all right, keep working. It's not the same well ever, I stumble without you.

2:17 At fifteen, Ed was in a terrible car accident and lost his best friend, and then at twenty three he lost Chris. Chris was my mentor in life. In general, there is not a damn song I write that. I don't think what would he think. I wouldn't be here without you. Losing people that close to you at that age is devastating, and he's turned it into positive everything. So I won. God didn't promise our next breath. It's only the last one. We just took making music. That's the time of my life making music. I am as God made, and I like what I am. People ask me all the time, what's the best song you've written. I haven't written it yet.

2:58 I'm still searching, but not be anything without them. That's how we got here. Fama, that's a trailer. That's a trailer. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures of Pipe Man w four Cy Radio. And I'm excited about our next guest, who killed it at Bourbon and Beyond back in September and has a lot of other things going on there really cool too. So let's welcome to the show, Will from Collective Soul. How are you.

3:40 What's up man? Doing well? Doing well? Yeah, So let's start off there Bourbon Beyond. Okay, the last time I think you played a wimmer festival or something there was at Louder than Life like ten years before. So what I thing's really cool about Bourban Beyond is a band like yours could play both Bourban Beyond and Louder than Life. Yeah. Yeah, we you know, Collective Soul we get to We're kind of lucky, man in the fact that we can we can lend our our sound can lend itself to a lot of different festivals, like we'll we'll literally sometimes be it a almost you know, almost like hard rock metal festival. Sometimes, Uh, we changed the set list up a little bit, and uh, you know, and I think even your hardest head rockers are ready to relax a little bit by the time, you know, we got an all day festival. By the time we play World, I know, I even see the hardcore dudes are like, all right, cool, I got a song I can relax to.

4:44 Now, you know, right. And I am one of those you know, heavy heavy metal heads, but I, as all of us, we all like different types of music. And of course in my age bracket similar to yours. You know, heavy then and heavy now are two different things, you know. Like I remember being a kid and Kiss was heavy. Led Zeppelin was heavy, and these kids today would probably say, what are you talking about? They're not Heavy's pop rock man. Right right, you know. And so it's kaik And I have a brother who's six years older than me, and he absolutely loves your band. And I would never be able to get him to a Louder than Life. He would go to a Bourbon Beyond, but he would never go to a Louder than Life because that would drive him nuts.

5:38 A little too much rock for him. Yeah, last time we played there, it was a slash was with us, and uh we're on the same stage as Easy Top Man, you. Know right, that's pretty cool, right, yeah, you know, And so I did get lucky enough because when I'm at these festivals. Of course, by the time I get out of the press area, it's usually like time and it's time for the headliners. Like I think the last one I went to, I got out just in time for the headliner. But I was lucky enough. I don't know if it was lucky. I probably scheduled it that way, to be honest, but I made sure I was at your set at Bourbon Beyond and you guys killed it there. Man. Oh thanks, Man. Yeah, we're we've been doing it thirty one years now, and you know, we got Johnny rab on drums now, he's been with us since twenty twelve, Jesse Triplett since twenty thirteen. The band is really really fun, really fun lineup we have right now. We feel really strong about what we do and we try to take pride in it and put the best out there we can every night. Man.

6:43 See, I love that you said fun because it amazes me how many artists are in the band and are not in the band in the in the music world and not having fun. And to me, if you're not having fun in the music businesses the wrong business because everything outside the fun kind of sucks, you know. Yeah, and you're playing music for a living. I don't know, man, I think that's just one of the philosophies we have. You know, we call it a celebration. You know, it's not a job. It's not a The job is all the hours out off the stage, you know. Yeah, we call it a celebration. Man. So when we're on stage playing music together and we include the people in the audience, you know, it's a celebration of life for everybody that's there.

7:31 And and we our personality is the way we get along. We have fun on stage, you know, we have lots of our thing. I love that because it's funny. You know. I go and I do festivals all over the world. And I remember a couple of years ago, I was at Hellfest and there was one artist, huge, huge artists, and all he talked about in the press conference is how much touring sucks. And I'm thinking of my I'm thinking of myself, man, I would be that would be the most fun part for me. Like it might be time to end the music career if you think touring sucks, because that's kind of the biggest part of it, besides writing music too. Like both of them should be super fun, you know.

8:13 Yeah, I always say that other than affording a lifestyle, you know, everybody's got to make money. But other than that, my favorite things about what we get to do are touring around, meeting new people, playing in front of different audiences. And then the other thing I love is I'm able to you know, have friends that are you know, legends or or peers of mine. You know, we just last weekend we were at a festival in dustin, Florida, and we were hanging out with Cheap Trick and Sticks thirty eight Special. All these guys were already friends with and then you see them again and it's really it's really gives me. Gives me a lot of positivity when I'm when I'm hanging out and talking to those people.

8:57 Yeah, because like for you, a lot of your friends are out on the road anyway, so like that's where you go see your friends, right a. Lot of times. Yeah, And same thing with those cruises as we do. You know, we're on the Summer of ninety eight cruise in February twenty twenty six. But yeah, man, all those bands on there, we're all friends with and so we're stuck on a boat together for four or five nights and we have fun together. And I wanted to ask you about that since you brought it up. Then, like, how do you dig as an artist being on a cruise opposed to a normal festival, Because like I've done ship rocked and that for years they asked me to do it. I'm like, no, I don't think so. No, I don't think so. And now that I've done, and I'm like, oh my god, I would do these cruises all the time. They're badass.

9:45 Yeah, we have fun. We get one now it seems like we're pretty consistent. There's one a year that we're doing. Yeah, they're fun and we you know, we actually we actually got a lot of fans that we enjoy talking to also, And I know that sounds weird with some some musicians, but uh, I enjoy hearing the feedback about Collective Soul. Most of our fans are really inspired by the lyrics. Uh. And they tell me stories about their lives and how music has affected it and uh and I find that to be I can talk about that for a long time. I found that to be like one of the one of the mysteries of the world is why why is music so powerful? You know? Why why can't it You know, I'll use the word change your life, you know, yeah, uh, And I'll only say that because, you know, in the beginning, when people we were doing this and people would say, you know, your song saved my life or got me through a point, you know, changed my life, we didn't take it too serious. And then after decades of touring and hearing the same things, you kind of start to understand a little bit about what they mean by that.

10:49 And yeah, and in music, man, it's uh, you know, you you you already know how powerful the force is. But to me, the question is, you know, how does it how does it get to be there? And it's it's just it's a combination of lyrics and melody, but it somehow can it can nail your soul? Man, It can go right to your soul, and it can take you back to a certain time. It can remind you of a certain smell or flavor, you know, in the blink of an eyd. Just those frequencies hitting your ear can change the way you feel. And I love that. I know it's a fact, but I like to contemplate about what that really is. Sometimes. Yeah, it's cool, and you know, based on what you're saying, I think to myself. Yeah, when you're like young in the begain doing this and people are saying to you, you're like thinking, yeah, that's weird or something like that a little bit, you know, and then as you get along in your career you realize that, man, music does change lives.

11:47 It's the best therapy there is, you know, both for you, the artists, me the listener, you know. And I mean it, it's funny making a pun on your band name, but it is. I feel when I'm at a music festival, it's like a collective soul there, Like there are no outsiders. We're just all there to share this experience that you know, makes us feel better about everything and escape all the bullshit in the world. That's right, That's right. I mean nice pond. But yeah, you totally become a collective kind of consciousness when you're at a show together as an audience and the band.

12:29 Yeah, totally. And so it blows my mind too, and it must blow your mind. Okay that this year twenty twenty five, you celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of your self titled album what they call the Blue Album. It's funny how so many of these type of albums are like colors, like Metallican's Black album and you know, and exactly they had to the red and the blue album. So like, does it trip you out that? Like you probably never thought way back when in ninety five that you'd be celebrating thirty years of this.

13:14 Yeah, No, we didn't think that way. We definitely were always thinking about like what was very next. We weren't thinking we made it. We weren't thinking, look how cool we are, We're on MTV. But we were always thinking about the next thing that was right in front of us. We always wanted to do, you know, the next record or the next whatever it was. I mean, Collective Soul we released our first five records in seven years. Nice, So we didn't We weren't like stopping and smelling the roses. We thought there was so much work to do. And I think that attitude is what allowed us to become a band that's now thirty years later. Yeah. And the same thing goes with the attitude we had about the songs and and how the strength of songs is really what carries a career. It's it's not it's not anything else.

14:05 The songs, the songs have to survive, and our music is definitely I can say, I can say pretty confidently now that the collective soul music will be played even when I'm gone, It'll still be around here. Well. And to your point, like the younger generation, a lot of them know your songs and they don't necessarily know where they know it from either. It's just like it's just an automatic thing. You know. I tell people, our music has pierced the fabric of society. You know, it doesn't matter if it's in family guy or the home depot when you're walking through shopping for something, or you know, they just started Amazon and started a new ad campaign and Sean is the Sean is the song on the ad campaign. Wow, it's all around you all the time now at this point. And yeah, the kids man that they go to the playlist, they check it out. They're like, okay, I like this nineties rock and they hit the playlist and you know, and I'm sure some of them were turned on to it by their the generations ahead of them, by their parents and people that they looked up to. But there's just as many twenty somethings in our crowd now as there are fifties and sixties, you know.

15:23 Isn't that cool nowadays? Like I remember back in the eighties, like I would never when I was a teenager go see a band that was like in their fifties, sixties or whatever. And and also my dad would have never taken me to a show. And it's like nowadays, like I take my kid and my grandkids to shows. Yeah, it's no, it's not a big deal for us to see three generations at all. You just mentioned it. It's not a big deal for us to see somebody in their upper fifties, sixties, their son and their grandson. Man, you know, and that's been my hairs stand up right now. That's that's one of the coolest things that I think we can be a part of. And we're all of a sudden also now we're a part of a family's memories, things they got to create and do together. And that's uh, that's that's super powerful and super cool.

16:16 It is totally cool. Now, let's step aside from Collective Soul for a second, talk about your new solo album, because, uh, you have some badass music of your own, and uh it's and then also you took over your dad's reel to real studios and has that feel. Yeah, that that's like you know something that you know first off, that studio Real to Real in Atlanta. You know, there's no collective soul without that studio. That's that's where we all met. That's where Ed honed his craft. We watched Ed hone his songwriting craft and he was head engineer there at my father's studio.

16:57 Wow. So he in that studio on seven And when my dad passed away twenty eighteen, I just went in there a couple months after he had passed and I was like, I'm not letting this place go. So I've breathed some new life into the place and I'm producing a lot of people down there. It's mainly it's mostly people from out of state that are coming into work with me. So I tell people it's a recording studio, but it's it's mainly a production house. Most of the stuff in there is stuff I'm producing or co producing. That's pretty cool, And I think it's cool what you did because people will take two different roads when their parents pass away. Either they will take over the quote unquote family business, you know, and others can't handle it like I'm thinking like you walk in there after a couple of months, and there's got to be a lot of ghosts in there, you know, not literally, but you know, and maybe literally there's.

18:02 Some spirit in there that's definitely my father's, right. I love that, you know. So it's kind of a weird feeling, right. Totally weird feeling. I embrace it and enjoy it. And ultimately, you know, I grew up in that studio. I know how to play almost every instrument, and I've seen every style of music go through there. From the youngest of ages, I was playing drum tracks for singer songwriters. When I was fourteen years old, I was already playing drum tracks for studio sessions nice. So ultimately, I've always wanted to always wanted to do more producing. I've produced some stuff on side, and you mentioned my solo record as well, but once my kids were all grown up. I've got three boys. My youngest is nineteen and he's in the studio all the time with me. My oldest is on stage with Collective Soul right now. He's playing all the keyboard parts, singing all the background vocals. You saw him at Bourbon and Beyond. That was my son playing the keys and singing with us.

19:00 That's way cool. So so ultimately, yeah, now I've got time to pour a lot of time into the studio. Whereas before, between Collective Soul and raising three kids, I'd get home and I didn't necessarily want to go right back into the studio. And now it's like a it's a tight calendar. Sometimes I ask myself why I wanted to you know what, do I really want to be busier? But I do, And I want the next Collective Soul to come out there from another generation. I want the next band to come out out of real to real studios. I love it. And speaking of ghosts, okay, so you guys recorded Here to Eternity with the Presley Ghost.

19:45 Yeah. Man, we like ghosts and spirits. Man oh man, So what was it like? You know, like that's got I'm having shovels right now just thinking about it. I imagine the whole time you're playing in there, like you're having chills. Yeah. And I think if somebody would have renovated the place, or somebody had been living there after Elvis, I think it would have been different. But it was, literally, man, it was it was. It was frozen in time. Man, it was just like Elvis left it. So many of the pictures and stories that we would look up that were archival pictures that place had not change and it was a little bit run down, but to our benefit because we wanted it to feel just like Elvis left it.

20:27 We and we had met a friend of a friend who said he owned it and didn't know exactly what to do with it. And before he did start renovating it in the last year, but he was just taking his time on what to do with it because he had other properties in Palm Springs where he knew what he was going to do with it. He just he just had this Elvis estate. And of course our idea was let let the rock band get in there and record a record. Yeah, and we bought all the gear in all of our instruments, you know, had our had our sound man Fern drive across the country with a truck and and we we set up house in there, made it, made is comfortable, made it super comfortable for ourselves and you know, we have fun together. So we just had a blast there and for one month, man, we came up double record.

21:11 Well that's amazing, Like and especially nowadays, nobody works that fast on an album, how much less a double album. So that's pretty amazing. Yeah, yeah, you know, it depends. I know some projects that go pretty quick, but uh, you know, and then tracking the eighty five percent of tracking that we got done at Elvis's. There was always touch ups and a few more things to do, but the heart of the record was done in a month and I felt really confident about it. And now it's been out for a year and a half now and I feel like, Okay, there's another I mean, you know, I hate to say, I hate to be it, but there's another great, solid piece of work by Collective Soul.

21:53 And you should feel that way too, Like listen, if you're not proud of your own music, of who is going to be. Right from a tough cell man. I love and it is a tough sell because then you got to like fake it. And you see that sometimes with artists. There's artists that fake it and there's artists you can just tell that their their whole heart and soul is into it, and that that's I think what moves people when it's that. Yeah, and and what you said earlier too about us having fun on stage, we hear that all the time, and it's nothing that we're forcing. We're we have fun on stage, and I think that transcends through the whole room, you know, whether it's an amphitheater or a or a theater like we're playing tonight.

22:38 There you go. And uh so, let's also talk about the documentary because that's pretty cool. Give me, give me a word the Collective Soul Story. That almost sounds like a pun too, because it's like the collective Collective Soul Story. It sounds like to me, you know when I said, well, I was just saying that that's what came into my mind, and like it was, it came out. It's an Amazon bestseller upon announcement, and it also debuted on a number one in Billboard's Internal Music Video chart in July. Like that's amazing in and of itself that people want to see this stuff, or people want the Collective Soul Story.

23:29 Yeah, I mean, it's to say it's a small town stories. You can't really overestimate what kind of small town story it is. And we knew it was an interesting story and people would want to learn about it. I think we're most proud about the fact that through the production of the You know, it took us about four years to start collecting things and talking about you know who we're gonna interview, and then getting those interviews done. But by the time we got to Palm Springs and we were about halfway done with the documentary, the idea came, let's let's integrate us working on a current record thirty years later, and we're going to go back in time and tell you the story of how we got to this point right here. So on a production level, we're really proud of that, and we're really proud of how it turned out. Joe, our director, did a great job.

24:20 I mean we you know, we were not we weren't going to be there on the editing room floor or anything like that. We let him do his thing. We had a few few little small things we asked him to work on after we saw the first draft, but we we knew we had something that we were going to be really proud of after the first cut. And yeah, like I said, it's not just a straight history lesson. You get to see us in current state working on a fresh new record, and then of course you get the story going back to the early eighties. You know, that's pretty killer. And Okay, so going back to like you said, you played like pretty much every instrument, So what les you to become the bassist? I have all the instruments.

25:04 Just that chemistry thing, you know, I mean, you know, and I tell people the word band, you know, a band is it could be a band of brothers, like a military band. It could be you know, it doesn't mean five individuals on a certain instrument that come together. You're not a band unless you think the same and you you like the same things, you hear the same ideas musically, and that's what we did, the original five. That's what we did, and that we needed a bass player so that I became the bass player. So I have a trivia question that I asked almost every bass player and nobody ever gets it right. Okay, who is one of the most famous bass players that really did it? Wasn't a bass player. He was a guitar player and he drew the short straw and had to be the bassist.

26:01 Well, Paul McCartney, there. It is, there it is. I love it. You got it. And it's funny because I was a total Beatles fanac when I was a kid and until I knew that. Then I went back and I listened to their songs. I'm like, holy shit, he does sound like he's playing guitar way he plays bass, and I never noticed it before I knew. He He's definitely my favorite overall artist. And I've got tickets to see him November two. Nice and I've seen him once live and you talk about music and emotion getting you. Oh my gosh, he came on stage and I didn't realize. I was like, why am I tearing up right now? It's like, what the hell? I couldn't stop it. But Paula just knows how to play any instrument and make it sound good in a song. And I always say this, even the early Basis, he played those Hoffner basses. Nobody else plays those. You know what they sound like? Crap man. I don't hope you.

27:07 Whatever you want, He's the. Only dude in the world who can even make it sound decent. Uh. I remember first being on tour in Europe and we're in Germany. I'm like, I'm gonna check out a Hoffner base, maybe get one, you know, Paul McCartney played that in the early Beatles. Uh. I did not even think about purchasing that thing. It was they and every all bass players will tell you it's not a fun base to play, and it's it's it's not a very good full sound. But of course by the time he got to his Rickenbocker days, then now you've got something I can play. So I've definitely got a nice Rickenbacker and I've used one on recordings before. Nice. You know. I'll tell you something that really I loved and blew my mind. The documentary, not the one Get Back, but the other one where he's with uh I think it's with Rick Rubin, and that one was great. Yeah.

27:59 The track they had him stemmed out so you could turn them up and down, and that was wow, that's super cool, just super cool. Watch. Yeah, And so what blew my mind was they were listening to one song and Paul just goes man back. Then I was just playing with my bloke John and he goes he goes. I can't believe I was playing with John Lennon like he was fan boying out over John Lennon, and I thought that was the coolest thing. Yeah, I can't wait to see the tour he does a there's a Lenon tribute and there's also a Harrison tribute. So wow, sure I'm gonna sure, I'm gonna cry again.

28:40 I know, right, but well worth it for sure. And so it's and I want to go back to one other thing you talked about liking ghosts. So I'm just putting this out there to Danny Wimmer that the next DWP festival you have to play on is incarceration. You know about that one. I don't know about that one. Okay, okay. It's at Shawshank Prison, oh man is and that is a haunted prison actually, and they have like a haunted house thing and going on there during the festival. They even have like there's a working prison next door where people are out in the yard and it's like, I tell Harris, it's like it's like you're Johnny Cash.

29:25 You're playing for the inmates, man, and it is and it is like I do a lot of festivals, and uh, there's definitely ghost there. Let me tell you. William will revis from Mushroom Head and Killer's Confession. He told me that he was in like there's a torture room and he filmed a video and came out and he had scratches all over his chest like bleeding scratches, like is definitely haunted. But it is so cool because, like my youngest story, she'll call me before every festival she's like, oh, are you excited about this? When I'm like, well, it's a load of fun. I love doing it. I don't know if excited it's the key word when you're doing it every week. But that when I did incarceration, the first time I called her up, I'm like, now I'm excited.

30:20 I'm calling you from the prison yard of Shawshank dang right. So I'm putting that out to Danny Wimmer. We need to get you on incarceration for sure. We'll try anything till Danny. We're good for anything. There you go. Do you have anything else you want to share with the listeners We haven't covered that you want to let them know that's coming up. No, we do have a record coming out in the spring, and we're always on tour. We got it. We do have a really fun three night we're trying to get where we can maybe take a whole week and get a residency going. But we're doing three nights in Vegas early February. Nice Check. Collective Souls Socials you'll find out the information. But we're there at the Venetian and that's gonna be a fun deal. And we're also doing that Summer of ninety eight crews that's early next year as well, So yeah, check out both those things.

31:11 Very cool, and you guys should look into playing at the Sphere because yes, sure, wild right. I've seen the U two show that was really good. I'm a big fan, so. It is wild for sure. Well, you guys rock. You killed it at Bourbon Beyond and I look forward to seeing a lot more of you. And and again Danny put them on incarceration. And thanks for being on the Adventures of pipe Man. Cheers Man, appreciate you man, thanks for. The support anytime, my pleasure. Hey, what's up. This is Will with Collective Soul and you're listening to pipe Man on W four c Y.

31:57 Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipement on W for c u I Radio.