Home National Music News Alan Evans Shares ‘Nothing To Say’: Exclusive Premiere

Alan Evans Shares ‘Nothing To Say’: Exclusive Premiere

156

Soulive drummer Alan Evans will issue his debut solo album Nothing To Say on May 10 through his Vintage League Music label. JamBase is pleased to premiere the LP’s title track, “Nothing To Say.”

Alan handles vocals, drums, guitar and bass on the record, which was recorded over a four-year period. Contributors include Neal Evans, Danny Mayer, Kris Yunker, Beau Sasser, Darby Wolf and Ryan Hommel. The song “Nothing To Say” was a staple of the repertoire for his Alan Evans’ Playonbrother project, a group that also featured Mayer, Yunker and Sasser.

Evans wrote the following about “Nothing To Say”:

“This song came to me while sitting on my deck one beautiful afternoon shedding a Frank Zappa tune. I remember putting my guitar down for a sec to catch a break and rewind the song I was learning. Before hitting play, I just played something else real quick to get my fingers feeling something different and all of a sudden I was playing what would end up being the lines at the end of the solo. I knew I had I something!! So I put aside FZ for the rest of the day and focused on uncovering the rest of the music for this song.

Once I had the music all figured out, I knew I lyrics were out there as well. So I kept hearing the ever present million dollar songwriting question in my head … What’s this song about?!?! So I would sit sometimes for hours with my guitar in hand playing the song over and over and almost out of frustration I remember thinking, I just have nothing to say!!! Wait … Nothing to say. I wrote that down in notebook and I was off and running.

Lyrics come to me as little short movies in my mind and I try to describe what is playing out with as few it’s as possible. For me, this song is kind of how I approach life a lot of times. I can be quiet, back in the cut. I feel a lot of people are like that. There’s so much going on in the world. Most times it’s better to think about stuff before saying anything. Like the one line… “I’m half black and white and I got nothing to say.” That came from my experiences growing up where people were fascinated with me being “mixed” (especially women as I got older) but to me it’s no f*^%ing big deal. Race isn’t and shouldn’t be an issue so I had nothing to say about it. So like I said, I try to put bigger pictures into small lines lyrically delivered with music that will make you move and hopefully hit repeat.”

Listen to “Nothing To Say” below: