William Shatner’s upcoming blues album is almost finished
"William Shatner" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
William Shatner is nearing completion on his blues album.
Back in June, Shatner revealed that he was working on an album and possibly a documentary about the tight-knit blues community. Now, in an interview with Dallas, Texas-based entertainment website Central Track, he’s revealed that the album is in post-production (he didn’t mention the documentary).
Shatner was speaking to Central Track ahead of his appearance in Irving, Texas, this Saturday. He told Central Track, “I did just finish a blues album. I just laid down the last tracks, actually. Now, they’ve got to do all the production on it, and it’ll be out in the months to come.”
Shatner spoke about the process of making a blues album, which is a departure from previous musical work that he’s done. (Slight side note here: Shatner’s album Has Been - which was produced by Ben Folds and features cameo appearances from Henry Rollins, Aimee Mann and Jarvis Cocker, among others - is a gem.) Shatner said about the blues process, “What I can tell you is I approached that slowly. I didn’t know whether I could do it or not. When, finally, I entered the studio, they had a couple of songs ready for me to cover, and I looked at it: Where do you place your voice? What’s the track here? What do I do? And with a little experimentation, I think I found it.”
When pressed whether the study of acting was similar to musical performance, he said, “That’s right. You have to find the reason the song, and the words, exist. That’s all I try to do.”
You can see William Shatner in his World Tour, currently working its way through Oklahoma and Texas before heading overseas to Scotland, in March.
