Adrian Belew’s singular, odd-angled career as a guitar visionary and endlessly curious musician continues with the pending release of Pop-Sided, the Northern Kentucky native’s first solo record in a decade.
As the album’s title might suggest, expect the new material to be more in line with the meticulous songcraft of his work with The Bears (which also featured Cincinnati musicians Chris Arduser, Rob Fetters and Bob Nyswonger) than the eccentric excursions of his time fronting King Crimson or as a touring guitarist with Frank Zappa and David Bowie.
“Inner Revolution is probably what this record is most like,” Belew says by phone, referencing his stellar Power Pop-leaning solo album from 1992. “I would probably point to that record more than anything else because of the variety of those songs, some of which you walk away singing. I’ve been touring with my (Adrian Belew Power) Trio for over 13 years all around the world, and what I’ve learned more recently is that’s kind of where people would like me to go back to — the singer/songwriter stuff, with the interesting guitar work and interesting production, of course.
“They’re Adrian Belew Pop songs — somewhere between The Bears, The Beatles, King Crimson and me.”
Pop-Sided might be Belew’s first full-length studio recording to drop since 2009’s e (a 42-minute instrumental suite), but don’t think the ever-restless singer, songwriter and prolific session guitarist has been sitting on his hands over that time. He’s toured regularly with the aforementioned Adrian Belew Power Trio, performing songs from across his versatile four-decade career, and he continued to contribute guitar parts to projects by artists like Nine Inch Nails. He's also recorded and done tours with Gizmodrome, a supergroup featuring Belew, keyboardist Vittorio Cosma, bassist Mark King of Level 42 and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer Stewart Copeland of The Police. And he did music for the 2016 Academy Award-winning animated short Piper.
Belew spent a lot of time on FLUX, a fascinating iOS app that plays random snatches of his sonic creations.
“It took me six years to develop and record and create all the material that’s in FLUX,” Belew says. “There’s so much in FLUX because the idea behind it was that every time you hear it, for a half an hour it’s different and the material appears in different ways in a different order. It’s interrupted by snippets and sounds… and visuals, which never come at the same time either.
“It took some six years to really develop that, and in that time I was writing like a fiend but it just wasn’t going on proper records.”
“You Never Know,” one of the songs Belew wrote for FLUX, is a tribute to Bowie, his longtime friend and collaborator whose 2016 death came as a surprise. The ethereal track floats by on a bed of strings, Belew’s atmospheric guitar and lyrics that relay an elegiac chorus: “I always thought I’d see you again/You can never know if or when/I always thought I’d see you again/You never know.”
Belew says his new touring band — which includes drummer Jordan Perlson, longtime Power Trio bassist Julie Slick and multi-instrumentalist Saul Zonana — will play “You Never Know” live for the first time on the current Pop-Sided tour.
“I remember in 1977 I was driving up 21st Avenue South here in Nashville in my broken-down Volkswagen,” Belew says, reminiscing about how quickly and drastically his life changed more than 40 years ago, as he’d go on to join Bowie’s band. “I was as poor as a church mouse, and I turned on the radio and there was a new song by David Bowie called ‘Heroes.’ I just fell in love with it. I was just so amazed by that song. I always liked so much of what he did.
“Eighteen months later I was playing that onstage with him.”
Born in Covington, Belew hasn’t lived in Greater Cincinnati since the mid-1970s, but he doesn’t hesitate to mention the impact his hometown area had on his life and career.
“When I was growing up in the Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati area, there were so many great bands and so many great musicians around that I thought that was normal,” he says. “I thought every city in the world had that. As I traveled around the world, I realized that wasn’t true, that Cincinnati really did have a plethora of really fine musicians. The music scene there was very lively. I heard so many different bands all the time that it was one of those situations where, if you combine that with all the great music that was coming out at the time, it’s really a hotbed for someone to want to get into music. It was perfect for me, because it gave me a lifestyle. Basically, every day of my life I just wanted to get better at playing music and listen to all the new music and play it.”
In addition to the recently completed 11 songs on Pop-Sided, Belew says he has another 19 songs written and ready to record, one of which is titled “70 Going on 17.”
“That was really the original premise for the new record,” Belew says of the fact that he will turn 70 in December. “It’s just saying, ‘I might be 70 but I feel like I’m 17.’ I’m living my life the way I please and I’m happy as a chickadee. I don’t know why, but I feel extremely young. I think it’s just my spirit and my nature. I’m a naïve kind of person. I use a lot of my energy toward creating things like a child might do. I don’t think of myself as a child, but I don’t think of myself as being even past the age of 30.”
The current tour will run off and on through the rest of the year, with Belew recording new songs in between at his home studio in Nashville.
“They pretty much sound like a band even though I play everything on them,” Belew says of Pop-Sided and the new material he will record. “It’s very much a solo endeavor with the exception of having a recording engineer, and it all fits very well with having a band playing it live.”
It seems Belew’s urge to create new music will never cease.
“It’s just my purpose,” he says. “I always knew it. Even when I was a child, I knew I should be doing something. I didn’t know what it would be, but I knew it wasn’t supposed to be the typical job. I always loved to draw. I always loved to sing. I always loved to play drumbeats. Everything about me was about being creative.”
Adrian Belew’s concert Saturday, March 9 at Ludlow Garage is sold out, but he recently announced his return to the venue for an Oct. 4 show. Tickets/more info: ludlowgaragecincinnati.com.
