42 year old Chris Cornell is currently out on the road promoting his upcoming album, Carry On, due June 5th. Despite the fact that Cornell has been playing live for over 20 years, he has no plans to abandon the touring lifestyle.
In a new interview with the Toronto Sun, Cornell says he feels obligated as a musician to hit the road, even though it's not always fun.
"It doesn't really matter in a sense, either, that it's for a new album because I'm playing songs as far back as 1990 and just kind of covering music from my entire career.
There's kind of two schools of thought. One is you let the record come out and see how people are feeling about it and then you choose where you want to go and how big a room you want to play -- and that's sort of the cautious way of doing. And then the other school of thought is you just go out before the record comes out, boldly, and play new music and play old music and just get in the rhythm of touring.
Really, I just wanted to get out and play 'cause it's been too long.
I really like performing and I like traveling and I like road and most musicians don't, some do. But, you know, if you read stories about, say for example, the jazz musicians, pre-war and post-war, it's what they did. It's all they did. And I don't glamourize that in my mind. I've read extensively about what their lives were like, and I don't envy it. I do it in a much more comfortable fashion. But I would feel a little bit like a pretender, like a fake, if I wasn't out travelling around and playing music 'cause if I'm going to call myself a musician, that's what I feel like I should be doing."
Hey Chris, fans of those jazz musicians didn't have to pay $185 apiece to go to a show. Can you do us all a favor and make it easier to see you live? We all thank you in advance.
