Growing as a human being and pursuing his goals on his own terms have been central to John’s pursuits. John has always sought to have as much creative freedom and input as possible in all his projects. In the early 2000s he wrote a massive encyclopedic book on guitar-driven music, entitled Uncommon Sound: The Left-Handed Guitar Players That Changed Music, which includes hundreds of interviews of lefty artists, both famous and lesser-known. The book, published in 2006, was featured on NPR and twice on the US TV game show Jeopardy.
With a few dozen movie and series credits under his belt, John recently decided to reassess his priorities and bring music back into his life as a main activity. In 2021 he gathered some top session musicians and recorded fifteen of the songs he’d written over the years. He plans to release them one by one across all streaming platforms, starting with HOW COOL IS COOL on March 25. Live gigs will be forthcoming.
How Cool Is Cool
Als nächster bei uns "zu Gast", an diesem sonnigen Freitag, ist ein Künstler namens John Engel. Künstler in zweifacher Hinsicht, einerseits ist er Filmemacher, andererseits Singer und Songwriter. Und dieser Singer und Songwriter veröffentlichte gerade eben seinen Song "How Cool Is Cool".
Die Story dazu kam ihm durch die Erinnerung an seine Schulzeit. Der eine Junge der Gitarre spielte, Quarterback war und die heißeste Freundin hatte, der Coole veränderte sich nach der Schule zu einem Typen den man nicht mehr bewunderte. Diese Erinnerung war seine Inspiration dieses Lied zu schreiben.
"How cool is it to be cool if you’re freezing by the time you’re forty? The lyrics are pretty ironic. I guess I felt let down that this cool guy I liked became someone I later despised.", ließ er uns wissen. Musikalisch erinnert mich John Engel ein wenig an "The Wings" meets The West Coast Sound, der Song entwickelt diese Leichtigkeit und Freiheit im Sound die stets in der Luft liegt. Ein raffiniertes Arrangement trifft auf ein emotionales Storytelling welches dem Song Charakter und dem Klang die Eigenschaft des Strahlens verleiht. Die Entscheidung "...to bring music back into my life..." war die richtige!
Q&A
Who inspired you to make music in general?
I had a much older sister and brother who listened to all kinds of pop and soul. My father loved classical music and my mother always had the radio on. So there was a lot of musical genres playing around the house throughout the day.
Ever since I was five years old, I sang along to anything and everything I heard, from Mozart to Louis Armstrong to The Beatles. From a very early age, I imagined myself singing in a mic and walked around making up melodies.
What's the story behind your latest song "How Cool Is Cool", respectively what was your inspiration?
When I started college, there was this guy I sometimes played guitar with. He was a senior at this big fancy high school. He was their star quarterback and played guitar in a rock band. He was the cool kid with the hot girlfriend. And then school was over, and the cool kid stopped being cool. Oddly enough, he turned into a dope-addled racist bully.
The ghost of a distant memory. I wrote this song about him, to ask, ‘How cool is it to be cool if you’re freezing by the time you’re forty?’ The lyrics are pretty ironic. I guess I felt let down that this cool guy I liked became someone I later despised.
From the idea of a song to the release, what's in your opinion the most time intensive part of "writing/recording/producing a song"?
It can all be pretty time-intensive, but every bit of it is a total blast! I don’t like rushing things. Writing lyrics to a song can take me hours, days, weeks or months, depending on when I finally feel I’ve got it. The music can take many paths – sometimes I’ll start a song as an instrumental and I’ll write lyrics to it later on, other times I craft a chord progression and melody to the written words, or sometimes a song is all done and I realize the mood of it isn’t what I want and then I re-work the progressions, the melody, the breaks, and so on.
Recording or producing is much the same way. It is a step-by-step construction. Rehearsing, finding the right tempo, working the tune until we get a good sense of what the instrumentation should be. And when we’re halfway through the recording process, I go back and temp all the vocal harmonies and arrangements on my own, and then we record them with the singers – and I might still change things in the studio.
What do you prefer, a live gig or a studio session?
They’re such different beasts and I love them both. For sure, I feel safer in the studio. And in the studio you’re steeped in the creative process, which is the best!
I just love being in that bubble. That said, however vulnerable I might feel on stage, there’s no greater high than being there singing and communing with an audience.
At this moment what would be your "All time Top 3 Songs"?
I’m glad you said “at the moment”, which to me means not “all-time” ;-) …
It’s an ever- moving target, shifting with moods, times, and seasons… So right at this moment – and of course, there’s a touch of evergreen in there – I’d say
Paul McCartney’s - The Long and Winding Road,
Bahamas’ - Trick To Happy, and
Bill Withers’ - Ain’t No Sunshine.
What's your most useful talent besides music?
The usefulness of a talent is a subjective thing. I love drawing and painting. But if I were to think of what is most useful, I’d say my fondness for balance and, with that, my diplomatic skills.
If you could change anything in the past, what would it be?
I wouldn’t. Not anymore. A life is what happens, not what you think it should be.
What’s next for you?
Producing series is still on-going, and we’ve got some really good projects in the pipeline. But, most of all, I want to expand my musical activity. I want to keep stretching, collaborate with great people, write new songs, play gigs.
Photo credits: © Sunrise Music